


Shake the Dust

by susurrant



Series: Roads [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dean Has Powers, M/M, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Unrelated Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:27:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susurrant/pseuds/susurrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Suddenly all of their plans - all of the mad, hopeless, desperate scheming of the past year starts to feel like something real.</em>
</p><p>  <em>Thirteen months ago, John sold his soul to hell.</em></p><p>  <em>Dean and Sam are going to steal it back.</em></p><p>Sam and Dean figure out a way to get into hell and rip John's soul free of the pit, with flashbacks to John's last year. AU where Dean is not a Winchester.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

__

The men who lived upon the moor  
Would waken to the scratch  
Of hounds' claws digging at the door  
Or scraping at the latch.

And presently no man would go  
Without doors after dark,  
Lest hell's black hunting horn should blow,  
And hell's black bloodhounds mark.

The Hounds of Hell by Jason Masefield

*

_June 2008_

“This is a terrible idea.”

“It’s the only one we’ve got.”  Sam’s lips are pinched into a flat line, which means he’s thinking the same thing even if he won’t admit it.

“He’s gonna kill us when he sees the car.”

“We can fix the damn car.”

Dean twists his hands on the stretched leather of the steering wheel.  “You say that, but you won’t be the one killing your back on a creeper picking gravel out of the undercarriage for days if this goes south.”

Of course, if things really go south tonight Dean is pretty sure the undercarriage is going to be the least of their worries.

And obviously it’s not about the car - not really, but neither of them would ever say that out loud.  There’s a certain level of stupid that’s necessary to decide to park your car on the train tracks of the Albany-Buffalo line with the engine running and expect (hope) not to die.  Either they’re just that stupid, or they’re that desperate.  

“What time is this supposed to kick off, again?” Dean asks.

Sam sighs, kicking his legs farther apart in the passenger’s seat.  “At night.”

“It’s night _now_.”

“And it’s gonna be night for another ten hours, I get it.  Trust me, if there was any way to narrow it down any further I would’ve done it.”

Dean leaves it for now.  He knows just as well as Sam does just how much of a Hail Mary pass this is.   _If_ they got the research right, _if_ the train comes like they expect, _if_ they don’t immediately get smashed like bugs on a windshield, _if if if._

“Probably midnight,” Dean offers.  “Witching hour, all that jazz?”

“Yeah.”

Dean shifts in his seat again, trying to get comfortable but not comfortable enough to let his guard down.  There’s no telling how fast it’ll come, he’s thinking ghost trains don’t really abide by the normal laws of physics.  Sam is fiddling with the dials on the car radio, turning the static up and down.  Every once in a while the wind rustles dead branches together above them.

“So.”

Dean stills.

“Just...” Sam stumbles. “You and him. I mean, how?”

“You wanna know _how_? ”

“No!  No, definitely not.”

“O-okay.”

“Why?”  Sam asks, like that’s any better.

Dean shrugs.  “Why not?”  

He takes his eyes off the rearview mirror for a second to glance at the flat stare Sam is giving him.  

“Listen, can we both just accept that there is literally no answer I can give you that won’t scar at least one of us for the remainder of what is likely to be our very short lives?”

Sam’s eyes slide back to the windshield.  The conversation isn’t over, he can tell from the hard slant of Sam’s mouth he’s still mulling on it, but maybe he’s managed to at least postpone it for tonight.  The radio crackles to life with a high-pitched whine, and Dean can hear the wind picking up behind them.

“Showtime.”

 

*

 

_May 2007_

Dean’s head is pounding and his neck is killing him. He drags one hand up to knuckle at his eyes, cautiously squinting one open to get his bearings.

_Beat up truck bed. Nearly empty bottle of jack rolling towards him, bumping and splashing._

_Took you fucking long enough._

_I made a deal._

Shit.

John is nowhere to be seen, except there’s a patch of still-warm metal right next to Dean that suggests he hasn’t been gone all that long. Somewhere off to the right Dean thinks he can hear the tread of boots crunching along the hard-packed gravel of the scrap yard. He must’ve woken up just in time to miss John beating his escape.

Dean rolls over and bites back a groan. Maybe passing out in the back of the truck hadn’t been the best idea, not with his various and sundry collection of bruises and aches. His pants are pulled up but hanging open, tacky against his skin with dried spunk.

Nothing for it now, his pack is back in the house and it’s not like he hasn’t dealt with worse. He’s not even sure he’s got any clean clothes left; it’s been forever since they’ve had time to stop for a laundry run. Dean zips his pants back up and flushes at sudden sense-memory of John yanking them down, the scrape of teeth along his jaw and the too-tight grip of a large, calloused hand on his dick.

For a split second he thinks he must’ve banged his head harder than he’d thought, but once that first memory slots back into place the rest follow in rapid fire.

“ _Took you fucking long enough,_ ” he’d said and John had tugged him back in by his collar, slamming their bodies flush together.

“Goddammit, Dean,” John breathed against his neck, one hand slipping between them.

There hadn’t been anything gentle about it, or even particularly coordinated. They were both too liquor- and grief-sloppy to manage anything better than quick and desperate. Dean had jammed his lips up against the divot between the end of John’s jaw and his earlobe, sucking the skin in between his teeth and shocked at the feeling of almost tenderness he’d found there. Four years together and he hadn’t thought there was anything delicate about the man, not unless it had something to do with Mary. Or Sam.

And Dean’d been pissed as hell about the deal and still aching from the fight, shaky with adrenaline and with something else he wasn’t planning on sharing with the class - a spark of fire in his fingertips that felt almost like a separate, living thing.

He’d come faster than he meant to; wanted to draw it out but his body hit its limit and just gave over. John had pulled Dean’s head down, tucked it underneath his chin, one hand absently scratching through Dean’s hair and his other hand worked them both through the aftershocks.

Checking himself over now, Dean has some scratch marks on his arms that are probably new. Bright red little accents mixed in with the various touches of purple and blue and yellow he’s got from the mess of the past week. He doesn’t know what to make of them now except he woke up alone and something in him was expecting that.

He scoots down to the end of the truck bed and rolls carefully to his feet, then pats himself down and tries his level best to look normal.

Bobby isn’t around when he gets back to the house, but Sam is.

“Hey,” Sam says.

“Uh, hey.”

“Listen, is everything okay?  You seemed kinda weird before.”

“No - yeah, I mean. Just,” Dean flounders. “Trying to wrap my head around everything, you know? That it’s really over.”

“Yeah, I get it. You seen my dad around?”

 _Who me?_ “I think he was out in the yard before, dunno about now.”

Sam nods, but he’s looking around like his mind is elsewhere. “Hey, I know it’s kind of a lot, but can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Out in Cold Oak, you remember what happened?”

 _Nope._  

Sam keeps talking, doesn’t seem to notice Dean’s hesitation. “It’s just, I remember seeing Ava, and then I tore down the buildings - ”

“Hold up, _you_ did that?”

“Uh, yeah. I didn’t mean to, I don’t have a lot of control over it yet. I was just trying to stop Ava. But the thing is - is I remember something happened after. I know I got hurt, and then nothing. I woke up in Cold Oak with Dad there and you were gone.”

Dean shrugs, mind ticking into overdrive. “No idea. The buildings around us exploded and next thing I knew Yellow Eyes had zapped me out of there. About before - I just didn’t expect to see you up and around so soon, you were pretty much ground zero of the explosion, dude. Thought you’d be in urgent care getting your spleen stapled back together.”

Sam gives him a half-grin. “Nah, I feel fine.”

“Huh. Lucky I guess.”

Dean may have agreed not to tell Sam about John’s deal, but there was a limit to the lengths he was willing to go to lie about it. Sam deserved to know what happened, what his father had done. And what’s more, he was smart enough to figure it out, which just meant he was going to be pissed as hell when he did.

“Yeah, I guess,” Sam says. “Lucky.”

*

Sam heads off to look for John and Dean grabs himself a beer from the fridge, figures a little hair of the dog can’t hurt at this point and probably Bobby won’t be too mad.  Bobby takes one look at him when he gets back and rolls his eyes.

“Are you _trying_ to kill yourself?”

“No?”

“You look worse than when we pulled you outta that graveyard, kid, and that’s saying something. You ever think maybe some rest and some water might be a good idea?”

“There’s water in beer, I think.”

“Jesus. It’s like herding angry cats with you three.” Bobby plunks down a paper bag of drive-through on the table in front of him. “Eat something, and try not to do anything suicidally reckless in the next five minutes, okay?”

Dean plucks open the bag and gets hit in the face with the smell of hot, greasy food. “Got it. No reckless eating of hamburgers, scout’s honor.”

“If you were ever a boy scout I’ll eat my hat.”

With that, Bobby’s out the door, probably off to find John too. A minute later Sam wanders back in and takes a seat with barely a glance at Dean. They both eat in silence, working their way through burgers and fries, starving after too many days of running on adrenaline. Plus who the hell knows what kind of energy deficit Sam is working on, coming back from the freakin’ dead like that.

Dean glances over a couple times while they eat, but Sam just looks like - Sam. Dean hasn’t known the kid in the flesh all that long, but he seems fine.

Bobby and John come back in a while later, just as Dean’s finally starting to slow down. He’d been starving.

“Were you boys planning on leaving any for the rest of us?” Bobby gripes when he comes in. There’s a healthy stack of empty burger wrappers spread out over the table between them.

Sam pauses chewing. “Sorry, Bobby.”

He even looks a little bit abashed. Dean’s impressed.

Bobby picks a sandwich out of the pile and eats it standing up, over by the fridge. John doesn’t look at the bag, or at Dean.

“I need to get moving, if you boys are okay here for a bit.”

Sam drops the remains of his burger on the table. “What, already? Why?”

“Jim’s still not answering his phone, and we don’t know what happened. Dean, do you remember anything from before you got nabbed?”

John still won’t look at him.

“I did a sweep around the outside of the house, nothing after that though. I think Gordon was there - his car was parked around the corner, but I didn’t see him,” Dean says. “What d’you mean, ‘if we’re okay here?’ We’re coming with you.”

“You need time to recover, and Gordon - ”

“Gordon thinks we’re monsters,” Sam says.

John nods.

“Well too bad, we’re still coming.” Dean stands and crumples up the empty wrappers, tosses them at the garbage. Sam follows his lead and stands up too.

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ve been hunting on my own for two years, dad. You don’t get to call the shots anymore.”

“Yeah and look where that got you! Sam, you were possessed when we found you - you could’ve died. I’ll check on Jim, it’s not up for discussion. I’ll be back by tonight.”

And with that, he’s gone. Dean hears the engine of the Impala kick over and pull away.

“Bobby - ” Sam starts.

“Aw hell. There’s an old junker I guess you could take. It’s a Dodge Caraven, just around to the left outside. Keys are in the ignition.”

“Thanks, Bobby.”

*

They’re packed and on the road less than ten minutes after John. Sam is driving because he got to the car first; Dean had taken an extra minute to stop by the bathroom and mop himself up as best he could. He’s not exactly squeaky clean, but at least he doesn’t have dried come flaking and itching in his pants anymore.

“He’ll have to stop to get gas soon,” Sam says.

“Huh?”

“I uh,” Sam licks his lips, “I may have siphoned some fuel out of the car last night, just in case. He’s only got about an eighth of a tank.”

“Damn, I should’ve thought of that.”

“Nineteen years on the road with him, I learned a few tricks.”

Dean watches out the window as they speed past the exit for Luverne. If John has to stop for gas thanks to Sam’s little trick, they’ve got a chance of beating him to Jim’s, or at least catching up.

“So, growing up with John Winchester as a dad, what the hell was that like?”

Sam snorts, but he does it with the faintest hint of a grin. “You rode with him, you know what he’s like.”

“Well, yeah. I know what he’s like when he’s hunting.  I just can’t imagine him reading bedtime stories, you know?”

“He didn’t.”

There’s a long pause and something of what’s Dean’s thinking must show on his face, because Sam starts talking again.

“He didn’t read bedtime stories, he uh - he talked about Mom. Just stupid stuff, I don’t think he even knew I awake, half the time. It was like he just needed to talk about her, just talk to someone else who knew her, even if I was too young to remember.”

Sam’s eyes are locked on the road, but his voice sounds a hundred miles away, one hand on the steering wheel, absently rubbing his thumb along the outer joint of his index finger.

“You know there isn’t anyone else left alive who does? Remember her, I mean. Those first few years after she died, something wiped them all out. Everyone except for Dad. I didn’t know, not ‘til a little while ago, never even realized. But I think - I mean, it must have been the demon, keeping him scared. Keeping us on the run.

“It wanted us on the road, it wanted me hunting. That’s why - that’s why it took Jess. He told me, out in Cold Oak. She died because it wanted me back in the life.”

“It was testing us. Wanted to see what we could do,” Dean says.

It hits Dean for the first time that Sam is the only other person left alive with an inkling of what it’s like to be one of Yellow Eyes’ special kids. And yeah, maybe Sam got to grow up with a real family - or a father at least, but only because Yellow Eyes allowed it. Only because John was another pawn on the board.

Sam’s hands twist on the wheel. “The question now is, what was it planning to do with us once the gate was open?”

*

Pastor Jim’s house is empty, at least by the looks of it. Gordon’s car is still parked around the corner but Jim’s truck is nowhere to be seen. 

Sam glances over at Dean and Dean just shrugs. It looks the same as he remembers it, back before the gate, and Cold Oak. Feels like weeks ago but it’s only been a few days. The Impala is nowhere in sight.

Sam takes the front and Dean goes around back. Even before he picks the lock he can smell the sulfur, see it clouding the edges of the windows. The upstairs is empty, same as last time Dean was here. Sam tips his head towards the basement stairs, where Dean knows Jim kept his main weapons stash.

The carpet just outside the door to the stairs is torn up, the broken edge of a bright red spray-painted devil’s trap visible underneath. Dean kicks the carpet back in place with one foot so they can open the door.

The basement is nothing like Dean remembers. Every cabinet door is open, the contents crashed down in heaps on the floor. Tools and wreaths and church altar cloths litter the floor around the perimeter of the room. In the center is a body slumped over, tied to a chair.

Just as Sam reaches the last step, Dean hears the click of a safety coming off. They both dive for cover in the same breath as a shot fires, inches over their heads.

Dean rolls off the side of the stairs and crouches down behind them for cover. Sam is somewhere ahead of him, back to the wall and taking meager cover next to a low bookshelf. Dean fires blindly into the dark side of the basement, blinking hard and just trying to buy time until his eyes adjust enough to see.

“Gordon?!” Sam yells.

Dean cuts his eyes over the chair on the other side of the basement. It’s Jim in the chair, or whatever is left of him.

“Come on Gordon, we can talk about this!”

 _I think we’re past the point of talking, Sammy_ , Dean thinks but doesn’t say it out loud.

There’s a slim chance Gordon lost track of Dean when they both went down. And if that’s the case then talking would only give him away. It takes Dean a second to realize that must be Sam’s play - Sam’s position sucks, and he’s already half-visible anyway. But he can distract Gordon while Dean finds a way to circle around and get off a shot.

Dean slips around the back of the stairs, squints into the darkness until he catches a hint of metal, gleaming in the dark and moving towards Sam.

He fires. There’s a muffled curse from the darkness and the glint of metal disappears. Glancing back at Sam, he notices that that the wall next to the bookshelf is empty now.

Dean sidesteps, scanning around the basement, all his senses on high alert. But Gordon’s waiting for him, and his eyesight has already adjusted to the dark. Something rock-hard connects with the side of Dean’s head, and then swings around again to knock the gun out of his hands.

Dazed, Dean finds himself with one arm twisted up painfully high behind him, the unmistakeable press of a gun to his temple.

“Tell Sammy to stand down,” Gordon says in a low voice.

“Go fuck yourself.”

There’s a crack and Dean feels his wrist snap. Dean’s knees buckle but Gordon doesn’t let go. He struggles to keep his feet, white hot pain shooting up his arm.

“I don’t want to have to do this, Sam,” Gordon says.

Sam is off to the left, he thinks. Dean grinds his teeth together to keep quiet and hopes to hell Sam has a plan, or at least a clear shot.

“Yeah, do what?” Sam says.

“Shoot Dean to make you talk. Your friend Jim had some interesting things to say about you boys. Of course, he wasn’t really your friend and his name wasn’t Jim, not anymore, but you get the idea. You want to know what he said?”

And it isn’t until then that Dean sees the Devil’s Trap scrawled out on the ceiling over Jim’s chair.

“Jim was possessed?” Dean bites out. The more attention he can keep on himself, the more time he buys Sam to maneuver.

Dean can feel Gordon's head nod just behind him.

“Possessed, gutted, exorcised. I talked to him for a bit first though. Told me a lot of things.

“Like how you and Sammy here have demon blood pumping through your veins, part of his big nasty plan. How the demon found you - Dean, on the street and sent you gift-wrapped with a bow to Johnny Winchester to be trained up like a good little killer.”

“That’s not what happened,” Dean grits out.

“It told me everything I wanted to know,” Gordon continues like he didn’t even hear him. “I heard all about Ansem Weems and Max Miller slaughtering their own families. Lily Peterson found a way to make it look like a heart attack when she off’d her girlfriend. That was pretty clever. Ava Wilson wasn’t as subtle - ripped her fiance to shreds, left blood and sulfur all over the place for me to find.

“Now you, Sammy, you went a whole different route. There’s something a little Oedipal about finding a pretty blonde girl just like your Mom and burning her alive on the ceiling. So tell me, Sam, what did the demon promise you in return for killing sweet, innocent Jess? Or was that just for fun?”

Dean clenches his teeth and hopes to god that Sam doesn’t rise to the bait. When no answer comes, Gordon wrenches Dean's arm up farther and his world whites out again.

“What is it you little bloodsuckers are planning?” Gordon hisses directly in his ear.

Dean gasps and pushes up on his feet, fighting to stay upright. If he goes down when Gordon’s still got his wrist held like that then he’s fucked in all the wrong ways.

“We’re not planning anything, Gordon. We swear, okay? Just let him go,” Sam says.

It belatedly hits Dean that Sam is hedging because he probably doesn’t have a clear shot, not with Dean standing so close to Gordon. Dean takes a deep breath, then another.

“Rookie mistake there, buddy," Dean says. "Didn’t anyone ever tell you? _Demons lie_.”

Dean pitches forward and jams the elbow of his good arm back into Gordon’s stomach, grits his teeth against the scream of pain that claws up his throat as his other arm is wrenched backwards and up.  

Shots fire off over his head, and it’s all Dean can do to hope that one of those was Sam hitting his target. He slumps down to the floor, hurt wrist cradled against his body. His gun, his gun is somewhere back by the stairs. If Sam didn’t hit true then he has to -

“Dean!”

It’s Sam. Patting him down, staying clear of the broken wrist but checking for other injuries.

“Dean, come on. You okay?  You hit?”

“M’good. _Fuck._ ”

“Sam, get the lights.” It’s John’s voice, coming from somewhere up above.

“Hold on.”

A minute later and Sam must’ve found the circuit breaker because the lights around him flick on. Dean doesn’t look down at his arm. He doesn’t want to know, not yet. He levers himself to his feet and finds Sam crouched over Pastor Jim, pressing two fingers up against the pulse point just under his jaw.

“Anything?”

Sam shakes his head. “Body’s cold.”

Dean swears again.

Gordon is on the floor in a growing pool of blood with a freshly aerated skull. The sleeve of Sam’s shirt is bloody; he must’ve been nicked by one of Gordon’s bullets, but it doesn’t look too bad. Sam tears up a sheet - looks like it might be an altar cloth, Dean notices with a wry grin - and ties it one-handed around the wound with a grunt.

“You boys okay? Sam?”

Sam grunts a reply and Dean doesn’t answer. His arm is throbbing, but he’s more focused on Gordon’s words.   _Demon said it found you, Dean._

“How bad is it?” John asks.

 _Sent you gift-wrapped with a bow to Johnny Winchester._ Jim was possessed.

“Dean!” John yells.

Dean snaps back into focus. “Shoulder’s wrenched, wrist sure as hell feels broken. How long was he possessed?”

“Does it matter?” Sam says.

“No, guess not.”

_Trained up like a good little killer._

But he knows better. Four years. Four fucking years and Dean had felt it, that very first night he’d felt something off and he’d been too slow to realize what it meant, that little tug in his stomach. Jim had been the one to talk John into taking him in, Jim had been the one to suggest that John trained him to hunt. Dean hadn’t thought anything of it at the time; he was used to being shoved off from one person to the next. John had wanted him to stay with Jim, and Jim had wanted John to take him.

Jim must’ve won that argument, just not for the reasons Dean had thought. He’d been so pathetically grateful to Jim for taking his side he’d never stopped to wonder why.

“We never tested him,” Dean says. Staring at the body. “Whenever we came by, he always tested us, we never tested him.”

It had made sense at the time; they were the ones out hunting, Jim was safe in his house, in his parish, sigils carved into every doorframe. They’d never thought it check if the any of the traps were broken. Tiny scratches through the paint to cancel out the wards, a sigil carved just wrong enough to be completely useless.

“Too late now,” John says.

John is messing around with a strip of altar cloth, tying it into a makeshift sling.  “You want me to pop that back in now, or wait for the hospital?”

Dean glances over at John, but John’s eyes are focused on his shoulder.

“Might as well do it now.”

He lifts Dean’s hurt arm and sets Dean’s hand over his own shoulder. They’ve had to do this a few times before, one or the other depending on who was hurt, but this time Dean can’t grip John’s shoulder the way he should with his wrist fucked up like it is. Instead John holds his forearm, a good distance away from the break. With his other hand he lays Dean’s good arm in the crook of his other elbow, letting the weight of it pull down on the hurt shoulder just a little.  Dean winces but stays quiet.

John squeezes Dean’s arm, working his way up and over the shoulder and then back down again. It takes a minute, but eventually the muscles relax enough to let the joint slot back into place. Dean hisses at the feeling - it’s not painful, but it’s not comfortable either, feeling the bones and muscles slide against each other like that. John doesn’t let go right away, he runs his hand over the shoulder a few more times, checking it over.

“Better?”

“Thanks.”

“Wait upstairs, make sure there’s nothing up there we need to get rid of.”

Dean ignores him.

Sam helps him into the makeshift sling for his arm and then they all get to work wiping down prints and tracking down the bullet casings. John drops his gun by Gordon’s hand, two of the bullet casings just off to the side. It won’t fool the cops for long, but if they can make it just convincing enough and the cops have no other leads it might work to throw them off the trail. There’s too much blood and other crap around for them to clean it all up.

“Sam, drop the car back at Bobby’s. Dean, you’re with me.”

But Sam just follows them back to the Impala; he knows John can’t start a fight out here on the quiet, suburban street without drawing unwanted attention. Dean is guessing that’s why John hasn’t reamed them both out yet for coming out to Jim’s in the first place. Once they’re all in the car John guns it heading straight out of town. The car is silent until they hit city limits.

John’s hand twists on the steering wheel, and Dean can see the clench of his jaw in the rearview mirror.

“What the hell were you boys thinking?”

“What the hell were _you_ thinking Dad, going off alone like that?”

“I could’ve handled it.”

“But you didn’t have to do it alone.”

“No, I didn’t. You two came along on your own and both got hurt. You think I wanted that?”

“I have a scratch, big deal. I’m fine. You don’t get to decide everything. That’s what you’re mad about, isn’t it?  You can’t control me anymore and it pisses you off.”

“If you’re hunting with me, then I do get to decide.”

“Then maybe I won’t be hunting with you.”

“Sam - ”

“Hey, are we finding a hospital anytime soon?” Dean interjects. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, his wrist is really starting to hurt. “If not, it’s cool. I didn’t really need that hand anyway.”

“Next town over,” John says, catching Dean’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Sam, there’s some pain pills in the glove box, can you pass ‘em back? And we’re gonna need to clean you up.”

“Clean me up?”

Sam twists around in his seat to pass the pills back and looks Dean over. “You’ve got some Gordon splattered on you.”

Of course. He’d still been pretty close when John and Sam had ventilated Gordon.

“You think you can change your shirt?”

“Yeah no problem. Gimme a high five while we’re at it, up top. _Shit._ ”

“Just cut it off,” Sam says. “You got a button-up or something in the trunk?”

Dean grits his teeth and clumsily cuts the shirt open with his left hand. “I liked this shirt.”

“You can bitch about it later.”

Twenty minutes later they stop three blocks away from the hospital and Sam slides into the backseat to help Dean into one of John’s old button-ups. Sam scrubs the dried blood from the back of Dean’s neck and head with the ruined t-shirt and a half-empty water bottle they find rolling around in the backseat.

John doesn’t want the car’s plates caught on any security cameras near the hospital, so instead he takes Dean by his good arm and walks him the last few blocks while Sam takes the car to park it someplace inconspicuous.

 

*

 

Aleksy Constantinopoulos has no medical allergies, a pin in his right calf from a bad break when he was a kid, and a family history of high blood pressure on his father’s side. He also has excellent health insurance which Dean is co-opting for the day.

John fills out the paperwork since Dean can’t with his wrist busted, hands it over the front desk and sits down to wait.

“You doing okay?”

“Peachy.”

The pills he’d taken in the car had taken the edge off, but he hadn’t taken enough to make him loopy. Hospitals made his skin crawl, no way he was doping himself to the gills before going in.

“Aleksy?”

A nurse with a pale blue scrubs and a clipboard leads him back through a maze of rooms, dodging around stretchers, wheelchairs, and assorted beeping and booping equipment designed for god knows what. She finally settles him down in small room to be poked and prodded and then eventually taken up for x-rays.

The doctor is a small woman, hovering somewhere around middle-age. She barely needs a minute to scan over his little clipboard of paperwork and glance at the x-ray before she tells him his wrist is broken. _Gee doc, ya think?_

They drug him up and set the bone, wrap his arm and cast it. Mostly it’s a lot of waiting around and then dealing with random strangers shining lights in his eyes and asking how he feels. Dean tells them over and over again he’s fine, he’s great, he really just wants to get the fuck out of here.

He doesn’t say the last part out loud.

It might not have been the best idea taking the drugs in the car, now that he’s double-dosed with the hospital goodies. Everything has a sort of halo around it and Dean’s arm feels wrong wrong wrong, but also not really important or connected to his body. He wiggles his fingers, watching them move but not really feeling it. Weird.

They sit him down in another room and Dean wonders if John is still waiting out front. Maybe Sam came back and they went to grab some food or something. Dean swears under his breath. Probably what they’re doing is screaming at each other in the parking lot, John pissed at Sam for following him to Blue Earth, Sam yelling right back at John for being left behind in the first place.

Hopefully they hold off killing each other until Dean gets back. Not that he could really do much to stop either one of them in his current state.

The doc comes back in and has a few more of her endless questions. She checks his fingers - Dean doesn’t know for what, that they aren’t going to fall off or something, then passes him a little brochure about aftercare. Dean holds it in his left hand as she goes over the basics, like he doesn’t know any better. Don’t get the cast wet, don’t shove anything in the cast to scratch, blah blah blah.

Dean nods through it, forces himself to sit straight and look alert. Everything about this place gives him the heebie jeebies and the sooner she can run through her spiel the sooner he gets to beat an escape.

But when she’s done with all the aftercare spiel, she doesn’t stand up to leave like he expects. She folds her hands in her lap and gives him a serious look.

“Aleksy, while I have you here - I want you to know anything you say is confidential.”

“Okay...”

“You’ve got a good-sized lump on your head there, that plus the wrist and the bruising on your arms - ”

“Yeah, like I said I got mugged.”

“I know you did,” she says with a gentle smile. “And I’ve been doing this a while now. A few of those bruises are fresh, but most of them are days old. If someone is hurting you, I can help. But you have to tell me.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m fine.”

“You sure about that, Dean?”

She blinks and her eyes are dark red.

Dean snaps to attention. All he’s got on him is a couple packets of salt tucked in one boot and a knife in his ankle holster. _Shit_. Dean sucks in a breath, can’t seem to get enough air in and suddenly he’s almost panting. He starts talking just to cover it.

“So this is your game now?  Hang out at hospitals?”

“Not usually, but what can I say? I go where the work takes me.” She grins. “I can’t help it if I’m summoned.”

“Yeah, well this ain’t a crossroads, bitch. _Exorcizamus te -_ ”

Something shoves Dean back down in his chair, and he skids backwards to slam against the far wall. It feels like his chest is trapped in a vise, cranking ever so slowly closed. 

“I don’t think you want to do that.”

She walks over to him, swings a leg over to straddle his lap. Dean turns his head as far as he can to face away, skin prickling at the feel of her breath against his cheek. His bad arm is trapped up in the sling between them, but his left is hanging down along his side. If he can slouch down and bring his leg up just a bit he might be able to get to his knife.

“What do you want from me?”

“Oh, I already got what I want. Everything else is just window dressing. Nabbing John Winchester’s soul was the deal of lifetime.”

“You’re the bitch that made his deal?”

She leans back and smiles. “Employee of the month. Employee of the year, really. Three hundred and sixty four days from now I’m looking at a big ol’ bonus check.”

“Good for you, assuming we let you live that long. Gloating isn’t attractive, by the way.”

“I’m not gloating, Dean. I was just doing my job, you wouldn’t believe how many suckers will sell their souls for peanuts if the good doctor offers them a deal. Imagine my surprise when one of Azazel’s favorite little toy soldiers walks in through my front door, all hurt and needy.” She runs her hand through his hair, brings it back down to cup the back of his head. “I had to see for myself what all the fuss was about with you boys.”

“Azazel? You mean Yellow Eyes?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, he has a name. You didn’t really think we all called him Yellow Eyes, did you?”

Dean grins. “I think you mean he _had_ a name.”

“Touché.”

“So you might want to back off, because now you’re next on my list. I’ll do you just like I did him.”

She laughs. “Killing me won’t break John’s contract, and I know you don’t have the gun with you. Try again.”

“What?”

“Try. Again.”

“ _Exorcizamus te, omnis -”_

Her hand closes around his throat, clutching so tight he gags. She _tsks_. “Not like that, Dean. Any hunter can spew out a few lines of Latin, I want to know what makes you so different. You and Sam were supposed to be the generals in this war, and I’m not all that convinced that either of you has the juice for it. I want to see what you can _do_.”

Dean’s left hand is wrapped around the knife, holding it down out of sight under the chair. It won’t do him any good anyway; might buy him a few seconds but not long enough for an exorcism, and he’ll end up killing the host if she isn’t dead already. Dean hesitates, and makes a choice.

The knife falls to the floor.

“ _Go to hell.”_

Her head snaps back, and she obeys.

 

*

 

Dean stops just long enough to check the doc’s pulse and swipe her prescription pad and Aleksy’s chart before he books it out of the exam room.

The ‘script pad gets tucked away in his pocket for a rainy day, and Aleksy’s paperwork gets crumpled up in a ball and tossed in the trash a few doors down. Dean finds John waiting outside, standing with his arms crossed.

Dean’s still shaky with adrenaline and trying to cover it by bitching about the cast and the sling.

“This sucks.”

John just lifts an eyebrow and the meaning is clear. _Next time, listen to me and don’t get hurt_. Like John would’ve done any better up against Gordon.

“He ambushed us,” Dean says, in his own defense.

“And you knew he was there, his car was still outside. You should’ve been expecting it.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear?”

“I want to hear that you won’t do it again. You or Sam.”

“I won’t. You happy?” But he’s lying and they both know it.

The car is only a couple blocks away, parked in the far corner of a run down shopping center just west of town center.

“So where’s Sam?” Dean asks.

John doesn’t answer. He won’t talk about it, but Dean could take a guess at what happened.

They hit up a motel for the night. Flickering neon sign, check. Moth-eaten curtains and carpet that smells like it’s been sitting on the beach at low-tide for a decade or so?  Also check. Dean pops a few of the happy pills and kicks off his boots to lie on the bed. Whatever the hell is going on between John and Sam is going to have to wait.

He manages to yank off the sling with minimal injury or loss of dignity. His shoulder is still tender, even through the haze of painkillers. At the hospital they’d poked and prodded it a bit before declaring it was fine for now but telling him he had to go easy on it for the next week or two. Dean hadn’t argued. Not like he was going to be doing much heavy lifting for a while with his wrist all fucked up.

Speaking of which, he’s supposed to be keeping that sucker elevated. Dean bunches up a pillow and shoves it up against the headboard so he can rest his arm on top of it.

“Go ahead, make yourself comfortable,” John snaps and tosses him an icepack for the shoulder. Dean’s on the bed closest to the door; John’s by default. He’d only be half-lying if he said it wasn’t intentional.

“I am, thanks.”

He doesn’t move over when John sits down on the bed.

“Dean, get in your own damn bed. I’m not in the mood to fight with you right now.”

“Who said anything about fighting?”

John looks him over, eyeing the cast and the icepack settled against his shoulder. Dean is uncomfortably aware he’s still wearing John’s shirt and yesterday’s jeans. He’s pretty tapped out but not actually tired, and if he can nudge John in the right direction maybe they can spend some time doing something a little more fun than hunting or watching crappy TV.

“You feel okay?”

“Could be feelin’ better.” Dean waits a beat, but John isn’t taking the bait. Whatever, Dean’s not above playing dirty. “Think I popped my shoulder out again.”

That gets John’s attention. “When?”

“I dunno. Must’ve been when I laid down.”

“Sit up.”

Dean clambers back upright and leans in before John can get a hand on the shoulder. Dean drags his lips up over John’s jaw just as he leans down and bites down on his earlobe. John freezes.

“Dean.”

“Hmm?”

“Your shoulder - ”

“Feels better now.”

Dean’s right arm is hanging useless against his side, but his left works just fine. He grips John’s arm, pulling him forward.

John pulls back.  “Dean, stop.”

“Why?”

“We’re not doing this.  The other day - that shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have let it happen.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“I made a mistake.”

“Bullshit.”

“I shouldn’t have - ”

“No, _bullshit_. For once you did exactly what you wanted. And I don’t know if it was killing Yellow Eyes, or your deal or what that finally cut you loose, but you don’t get to just take it back.”

“No, I can’t take it back. But I can stop before it goes any further.”

“And why the hell would you want to do that? You want this,” Dean says and meets John’s eyes, steady. “Tell me you don’t.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what’s the issue?”

Dean pushes up and swings a leg around to kneel on either side of John’s hips. It’s not the best position; he can’t brace himself very well with the cast, and if John shifts even a little he’ll send Dean’s ass to the floor. He doesn’t care. Dean grinds down against John’s lap and doesn’t bother holding back a shit-eating grin when John groans in response.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“ _Dean_.”

Dean rolls his hips again, leaning forward so they’re chest to chest. He’s not going to keep arguing; the two of them have never been all that great with words anyway. There’d never been any long discussion on the terms of their deal with each other, no questions and no promises. John sucks at that sort of thing and Dean - he doesn’t need them.

He knows that John would kill for him - _has_ killed for him, he reminds himself, thinking of Gordon. He pushes the thought aside, just like he pushes aside the memory of Pastor Jim - who apparently he never even met. Not the real man himself, just a demon stringing everyone along like a master puppeteer.

John’s hands come up around his back, sliding down into the waistband of his jeans and pulling him closer. Dean hides his grin against John’s neck, glad he’s finally getting with the program.

 

*

 

They eat at some hole-in-the-wall diner, John with the local papers spread out across the table and Dean with his laptop off to one side.

“Storm clouds sighted over seventeen cities Wednesday night, all kinds of crazy power outages and omens, but since then we got bupkis. Who knows how many demons we let out the gate and there’s no killing sprees, no crazy stories. Nothing.”

“There’s something, Dean, we just haven’t found it yet.”

“Yeah well, it’s not right, is all I’m saying. I’m gonna hit the bathroom.”

Dean heads towards the back, but not to the bathroom. Something’s been bugging him since the hospital, one more thing in a long list of shit he's been trying not to think about it. He ducks down an alley outside the building and calls Bobby.

“Hey Bobby. Got a question for you.”

“You find something?”

“Maybe, I don’t know yet. What do you know about demon deals?”

“Jesus, kid, you don’t play around. There’s tons of lore on it, everything from Faust to Robbie Johnson. Basic idea is, you bury your picture at a crossroads to summon a demon and make a deal. When your time is up your soul goes downstairs.”

“When your time’s up?”

“Lore changes it up a bit. Faust got twenty-four years, according to some sources. Most folks I’ve heard of get ten.”

Dean’s blood runs cold.  “Ten years?  So there’s a set time limit?”

“Well yeah. Demons can play the long game sometimes, but they ain’t exactly souls of patience if you catch my drift.”

Bobby is still talking but the words don’t register.

John didn’t get ten years. He didn’t get five.

_Three hundred and sixty four days from now I’m looking at a big ol’ bonus check._

“- has to be entered into willingly, otherwise the contract’s not valid. Although that’s not saying they’re always one-hundred percent upfront about the terms - ”

“Thanks, Bobby. That’s uh - I think that should cover it. I’ll let you know when we find out what we’re dealing with here.”

He hangs up.

 

 

 _John, you fucking liar_.

 

*

 

_June 2008_

 

“ _Showtime.”_

Sam sits up and chucks the EMF reader into the backseat, shoving one hand down under the seat, the other clutching the shoulder of Dean’s jacket.  Dean curses under his breath, eyes fixed on the rearview mirror so hard he thinks he might give himself an aneurysm and wouldn’t that just be perfect timing.  He shifts the car into gear and revs the engine to check she sounds okay.  If they’re gonna bail on this, now would be the time.

“Dean _-_ ”

“Wait for the whites of their eyes,” Dean mutters.

“ _Dean!_ ”  Sam yells just as they both see a faint light rounding the bend behind them.  The wind rips through the trees, setting bare branches to creak ominously, rattling against each other like brittle finger bones.  Dean guns the engine, glancing back and forth between the rearview and the road ahead.  The tires kick up gravel and dirt, chewing up the road, mixing in with what looks like smoke coming up fast from behind.  

It looks like smoke, but doesn’t move like it.  It leaps and crouches; moves like a living thing. Over the rumble of the engine and crunching of tires, he can hear the faint whistle and chug of the oncoming train.  And if he listens closely enough, the baying of the hounds.

Smoke envelopes them, hot sulfur scent making its way in the open windows, despite the wind and speed.  Hooves clatter along the tracks, just behind the hounds.  He can’t see anything but the thin winding strip of the tracks ahead, and the pale light from behind reflecting in the smoke, washing everything of color. They’re matching pace with the hunt, just barely staying ahead.  
  
“ _Sam?_ ”

Sam is craned around in his seat, eyes scanning frantically around.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know how long it takes.”

Their eyes catch for a split second, mirror images of panic.  “Sunrise?”  Dean suggests reluctantly.

“We have enough gas for that?”

_Nope._

“I guess we’ll find out.”

 

*

 

The shoulder of a train track is not meant for driving.  The car lurches at an angle, spewing up gravel and bumping over the railroad ties when Dean wanders too close to the actual tracks.  He keeps a mostly pointless list of things to check when (...if) they make it out of this.  Shocks, tires, suspension.  They’ve got just under a half tank of gas left and two hours ‘til dawn and there is no way this is going to work.  His hands are cramping from white knuckling the steering wheel, and Sam doesn’t look in any better shape next to him.  

They can’t stop, and if they abandon the hunt before dawn he knows they risk becoming the hunted.  He’d looked over the map before they’d left, he knows the twists and turns of this stretch of track, but in the dark and smoke he can’t make one match to the other in his head.  Landmarks would help, but all he can see is about 20 yards straight in front of him, everything else is obscured by smoke.  He makes a point not to look to closely at it.  

He doesn’t want to see its teeth.

 

  
*

 

“ _Dean!_ ”

Sam’s voice is muffled, either from the wind or the way he’s twisted up and hanging half out the window, one foot braced against the dash and the other leg kneeling on the seat.  Sam fires off three more rounds in quick succession, keeping the closest of the phantom hounds at bay, which means he’s only got one round left and Dean still. Can’t. See. Shit.

He’s been scanning what he assumes are the sides of the tracks for the last mile or so, squinting into the bare trace of gray light that means dawn is just around the corner.  Watching for a break in what he thinks are trees, but might as well be coral at the bottom of the ocean for all he can tell.  Doesn’t matter; they’re out of gas and out of time. All he can do is hope they ran with the hunt long enough to count for something.

There’s a long stretch of straight track in front of them now, and nothing he can see poking through the fog as he hears the last round fire off somewhere to his right and wrenches the wheel hard left, praying for a nice flat clearing.

The car drops off beneath them just as Dean gets a hand in the neck of Sam’s jacket, yanking him back inside.  They spend one heart-stopping moment weightless, flying, before smacking down so hard Dean’s teeth clack together.

As hard as the landing is, he’s relieved to feel solid ground beneath him instead of say, an icy-cold lake.  Now that they’re out of the thick of the hunt’s path, visibility is just slightly better, enough for him to see there’s a clearing just beyond some brush and shrubs maybe ten yards away.  He guns it, and they jolt along, each brain-rattling bump bringing them closer to safety.  There’s just the barest hint of orange in the sky off to his left. _Time’s up._

They clear the pile of brush with a screech of protesting metal and a few alarming clunks on the underbelly of the car.  Dean swerves around to the left again, turning into the sun, or where it will be soon, half not-believing he’s actually alive to see it.

He stops the car.  Pulls the keys out of the ignition with a shaking hands.  They’re both hunched down in the seat, exhausted and adrenaline crashed.  Sam is panting beside him, blood streaked down his face from a gash on his forehead.  They bolt upright at the same time.

“Is that - ”

“I think I hear - ”

 _Hoofbeats,_ neither of them finishes.  

There’s a single figure approaching from the treeline just ahead of them.  They’ve been surrounded for so long by baying and clawing, bone-deep growls and the racket of the spectral train bearing down on them, that the silence now is deafening.  The hoofbeats are magnified, echoing in the empty clearing, crunching the frozen grass beneath.  It’s the tail-end of June.  There hasn’t been a nighttime frost in weeks.

The figure is tall, even taking into account the horse beneath him.  The man, if it is a man, and horse are both washed of color.  There’s no hood, no ominous cowl.  It stops just past the treeline, close enough that he can see the man’s eyes glinting in the weak morning light.  He glances over at Sam, and gets a wry expression in return.   _Whites of their eyes_ , they’re both thinking.

Sam will probably bitch later about how it’s a reference to the wrong war, that Lincoln was born about a century too late to be at Bunker Hill, but Dean still thinks it’s fitting.

The figure raises a single bone-white finger in their direction, grinning at them under the brim of the tall hat. Then it turns away, riding back towards the railway tracks, back to the hunt.  

The air freezes in his lungs as Sam makes a choked noise at his side.  His throat feels like it’s filled with glass, or jagged chunk of dry ice.  He pounds his fists against the center of his chest, but there isn’t enough room inside the car with the steering wheel in the way.  Still trying to gasp for air, he fumbles the door open and lurches out, doubled over and coughing.  His vision starts to blur, and his limbs feel far away, like he’s not really connected to them any more.  He levers himself up on his hands and knees, coughing hard enough that he can feel the blood rushing to his head, until bright red specks appear on the dead grass underneath him.  He sucks in one last desperate breath, sits back on his heels and brings both fists in hard against his breastbone.  

It’s over so quickly he doesn’t realize at first that he’s sucking in air.  

“-am?”  he croaks out.

The response he gets is faint, but it’s definitely an attempt at words instead of choking noises, so he’s content to lay sprawled out on the grass for a couple more minutes.  Except maybe not.  The ground is fucking _cold_.  He sits up and realizes it isn’t the ground that’s cold, but a large old coin that had been wedged under his cheek.  It’s covered in spit and flecks of blood.  “Oh, gross.”

Sam comes around the side of car, one hand braced on the hood holding him up until he drops heavily to the grass next to Dean.  He’s holding his very own shiny choking hazard between his thumb and forefinger, looking at it speculatively.

“He couldn’t have just handed them to us?” Dean bitches.  His throat feels like sandpaper.

Sam shrugs.  “He could’ve.  Wouldn’t’ve been nearly as creepy though.”

“Awesome.”

Dean snakes one hand into the pocket of his jeans, runs his fingers over the small satchel inside.  He’s got the coin in his other hand, still ice cold and shining in the weak morning light.

Sam leans back against the car, cuts his eyes away from the coin and back to Dean.  “Step two?”

“Bring it on."

 

  
*

 

_May 2008_

A week after they’d buried John, Sam and Dean had stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Devil’s Gate in Wyoming.

“You ready?” Sam had asked.

“As I’ll ever be.”

The Colt slid home in the lock like a well-used key. He felt Sam shifting next to him, adjusting his stance, stretching out his empty hands in front of him.

The mechanisms of the gate thunked into place one at a time, like an old clock tower ticking down the minutes and hours. Dean ran his hands down his sides, pretending it was static he felt crackling along his palms, teasing at the back of his neck.  The last latch slid back out of the way and the door swung open.

There was no rush of demon-smoke this time. No screaming wall of tortured souls clawing to break free. Only silence.

They walked forward in tandem to the opening of the tomb. At first there was nothing but the darkness, then slowly Dean’s eyes had adjusted and he saw inside.

It was tomb. _Just_ a tomb. Centuries-dead flowers tipped over alongside stone burial vaults obscured by time and layers of dust.

No gaping crater leading straight to the pits of hell itself. Just a cracked concrete floor, solid as anything else. Dean wanted to punch something, so he did. Slammed his open palm against the wall with a curse, pumped up for a fight that wasn’t coming, not now, maybe not ever. He paced the small room, letting the adrenaline bleed off bit by bit.

“It didn’t work.” Sam was still standing in the doorway, inspecting the tomb like he could still find a way in, hidden among the burial plaques.

“Maybe it only works once?”

“Maybe everything that wanted to get out already did.”

Dean shivered. It didn’t matter. They had failed, again. They’d buried John. Buried him - not burned him - because even after a year of trying and failing, fuck if either of them were admitting defeat that easily.

Three weeks later, they’d found something else.

 

*

 

_Early June 2008_  
  


“You want to _what?_ ” Bobby asks, staring at the two of them in disbelief.

“It’s not actually all that dangerous, Bobby,” Sam tries to explain.  “Our bodies stay here the whole time.”

“Oh yeah I got that, believe me. Your bodies stay topside, it’s just your damned souls you’re risking on this wild-goose hunt.”

“We have to try,” Dean says.

“No, you don’t,” Bobby says, shaking his head furiously.  “You don’t _have to_ try to break into hell to get him out.  You don’t have to do anything!  Dammit - Sam, you think he would’ve wanted this for you?  For either of you?”

Sam’s mouth flattens to a thin line, his eyes go hard. “Well he’s not here, is he?  And apparently being dead exempts you from getting a vote on what other people might do to get you back.”

The conversation breaks off after that.  None of them really want to touch on the issues there; what John did and why and whether or not he had any right. They all have their own opinions, and the waters are muddied enough that no one can even admit there is no one right answer to any of it. So they stop, and Bobby goes back to cleaning his 12-gauge and Dean pretends to drink the half a cup of lukewarm coffee he’s got left in a chipped mug.

After a few minutes, Sam looks up and speaks quietly but firmly. “We’re going to do it, Bobby.  With or without your help.”

He pauses.  Bobby sets the shotgun down on the kitchen table, wipes his hands with a dirty rag.

“But we’d really appreciate your help,” Dean adds. “We know it’s a Hail Mary pass, but with you on our side we’ve got that much of a better shot of not fucking this up completely.”

Bobby runs a hand over his face and gives Dean a sardonic look. “Well of course I can’t let you two idiots do it on your own.” Another pause. “Okay, explain to me again how this is supposed to work.”

Sam comes over to the table in two long strides, laying out his battered spiral notebook with news clippings and computer printouts spilling out the sides. The pages are marked with sticky notes, dog-eared, covered in writing and sketches, smudges of dirt and blood.  Dean hasn’t spent as much time on it as Sam has, he couldn’t, not when he and John were on the road together so much.

But now John is gone and he and Sam finally, finally had enough information to do something about getting him back.

Sam talks fast, long fingers flicking through the pages, gesturing quickly to one thing and the next, laying everything out.  Bobby is mostly silent, but Dean knows he’s saving it all for later.  Later they’ll go over everything again, pick apart the details and cement their plans. For now it’s just the first pass, and Dean keeps a careful eye on Bobby’s expression, trying to gauge his reaction as Sam walks through their research.

“It all starts with the Wild Hunt,” Sam explains, tapping a page covered in messy sketches of a ship on a dark river and several ancient coins. “I don’t think we can cross over with just any old coin. Money carries the mark of how it was obtained, it has to carry the mark of death, somehow.”

“And I’m assuming you can’t just find a recent stiff with a family that follows the old ways, dig ‘em up and take the coin?”

Sam shakes his head, “No, it doesn’t work that way. It wouldn’t be the mark of our own deaths. And today most people that still follow the old ways use a quarter, maybe a silver dollar if we’re lucky. We could go out right now, kill someone and stick an _obol_ in their mouth - “ Bobby eyes snap up at Sam at that and Dean has to fight to keep his own reaction off his face, Sam continues without noticing “ - and take it out again, and it still wouldn’t be the right fare.

“If we go down there without the correct fare then we’ve wasted a trip. The hex bags only give us seven trips before they’re tapped out, and we don’t know how long it’s gonna take to find him once we get there. We can’t afford not to do this right.”

And so it’s the Wild Hunt for them, precious silver coins granted as a reward from the hands of the unrestful dead, and hex bags filled with innocuous tiny seeds and other things Dean tries not to think about too much. And suddenly all of their plans, all of the mad, hopeless, desperate scheming of the past year starts to finally feel like something real.

Thirteen months ago, John sold his soul to hell.

He and Sam are going to steal it back.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is wondering, the specific incarnation of the Wild Hunt that Sam and Dean run with is supposed to be one leg of [Abraham Lincoln's funeral train](http://www.history.com/topics/president-lincolns-funeral-train).
> 
> The "whites of their eyes" quote is supposedly from the American Revolutionary War, not the Civil War. Which was an accident because I fail at history but decided to leave in there because hey, it's totally canon that Dean didn't pay much attention in school. (School House Rock, on the other hand...)
> 
> And yes, the reason the only hunters John could interact with in hell were Jim and Gordon is because they were both already dead. Sam technically died too in Cold Oak, so he was fair game. Dean I'm totally handwaving as artistic license, because not-dead possibly-evil Dean taunting John was fun to write. Bobby, Ellen, Jo, Tamara, Lisa, etc. all refused to return his calls because they were all still alive. :)
> 
> I've been setting up the 'Jim was possessed the whole time!' reveal literally since I posted the first incarnation of Roads back in 2010. Ahahahaha haha ha... oh god is it 2016 already? 
> 
> No idea if anyone is even interested in these sort of story notes but I literally have 50+ pages of notes in a google doc (plus a spreadsheet to keep track of the timelines) about plot and background research and reality vs. hellscape, so I thought I'd share a few here. If anyone is interested I can absolutely keep including stuff like this in the end notes going forward.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for dubcon.

* * *

_June 2008_  
_(Present)_

 

Bobby eyes the girl distrustfully, one hand twitching towards his hip. No doubt there’s a knife there, or a gun or a flask of holy water. Dean doesn’t blame him.

“Bobby - ” Sam holds up a hand.

But Ruby offers up a slow, wary grin. “Don’t worry, Sam. The old man knows better. We’re all on the same team, aren’t we?”

That’s debatable. But bringing it up isn’t going to accomplish anything much, so Dean leaves it alone. “How about we all stop farting around and get to it?”

Bobby’s mouth thins as he shifts his weight. “You sure as hell sound eager.”

“Sooner we’re in, sooner we’re out,” Dean answers.

“Better get nice and comfy then boys, you remember what comes next?” Ruby says.

Dean takes a swig of holy water from his hip flask - it’s not part of ritual, strictly speaking, but he figures it can’t exactly hurt. “Cheers,” he says.

He sets the _obol_ on his tongue and closes his mouth, watches Sam do the same out of the corner of his eye. They've both got the hex bags tucked away safe, ready.

Low and sure, Ruby starts the chant.

The book she’s reading from is old and thin. She won’t tell them where she got it, only that they couldn’t borrow it - if they wanted to use it, it’d have to be with her here. That was the deal. It doesn’t exactly make Dean comfortable, knowing he’ll be lying around defenseless with her nearby, but he figures Bobby’s around to keep an eye on her while he and Sam are busy doing their thing.

Dean tries not to listen too closely to the words, not that he could understand them anyway. He focuses instead on the metallic taste of the coin.

It isn’t a jolt or a shock; more like slow inevitable sinking. His arms, legs, even his chest all begin to feel heavy. The weight becomes crushing; he tenses up, pure instinct readying him for a fight. A rushing noise fills his ears, the last clear thing he hears is Bobby somewhere above him - yelling at him to hold it together, dammit.

When he opens his eyes, he’s standing in an open field and it feels like his throat is on fire.

Dean collapses to the ground, spitting up the coin onto the dry grass underneath him. He heaves, and steam that tastes like ash comes out his mouth in gasps. Sam is beside him, one hand bracing his chest and the other pounding at his back.

Finally the pain subsides and he’s left gasping for air on his hands and knees.

“ - shit, you okay?”

“Holy water,” Dean manages to get out, “bad idea.”

Sam huffs and gives him one last slap on the back. Dean rolls onto his back and looks up to see Sam laughing his ass off.

“You- you drank holy water?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“For a visit to hell.”

“We’re incorporeal anyway dude, it shouldn’t have mattered!”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh yeah laugh it up, chuckles.”

Dean climbs to his feet, picking up his coin along the way and shoving it in his pocket. Now that he actually has a chance to look around he can see… not much of anything at all. The land is flat as far as he can see, yellow-green grass covering patches of pale, dry earth. The sky is vaguely blue-ish gray and cloudless, without a sun.

“Huh,” Dean says.

“Yeah. It’s not exactly what I was expecting either.” Sam scratches at his forehead and squints off into the distance.

“I mean, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. But at the very least a big-ass gate or a river or something. Right?”

Sam shrugs and starts walking. “Let’s go then.”

“Go where?”

“This way, I guess.” Sam waves his hand in no particular direction.

Dean takes another long look around. One way is as good as another, and he figures moving in any direction is better than standing still.

 

*

 

They walk for miles, or at least that’s what it feels like. There’s no way to tell. Dean is still wearing his watch, although it doesn’t work, not down here. It’s a dizzying sensation, to know for a fact that you aren’t in a body but to feel every breath and every step as if nothing at all has changed. He can feel the hex bag still tucked in his pants pocket. He can feel the weight of his arms as they swing with each step, the crunch of the earth beneath him, even the taste of the dry air in his lungs.

Nothing is real down here.

Or maybe it is, just not in the same way he’s used to things being real.

He’s so wrapped up in his head that he almost misses it when Sam stops walking. He stops just short of running into Sam’s back, whips around to see what’s got Sam’s attention.

It’s a dock. Or it was, at some point. The wood is bleached nearly white, and all that’s left is the first few planks leading out over a steep cliff that stretches as far as Dean can see in either direction. The drop off is so sudden it’s practically invisible unless you’re standing right on the edge of it.

“Holy sh-”

It’s deep enough that Dean can barely make out the bottom, can’t tell if it’s water or just more earth, only that it’s dark and far, far below.

Sam sits down on the very edge, feet hanging over the open air.

“You have a death wish or something?”

“Souls are eternal, and our bodies are still topside. We don’t die unless they do.” He says it like it’s an entirely philosophical argument. Like he’s not hovering one strong breeze away from finding out if he’s wrong.

“You seem awful sure about that.”

“Oh, I mean yeah - we can get scarred and warped, turned dark, maybe… stranded down here forever. But I don’t think we can actually be killed.”

Like that’s in any way reassuring.

He tells Sam as much and sits down (a good six inches away from the edge, he’s no pansy but he’s also not suicidally careless like some people.) He pulls up clumps of dry grass and sprinkles them bit by bit into the void, watching them disappear below.

The canyon below them is cut away in swathes, varying layers of grays and tans and browns. The dock must mean something, he figures. There's nothing else around, nothing other than dead grass, earth, and sky. Dean shakes his head to clear it - there’s a faint buzzing in the background that had died down as they were walking, almost to the point where Dean had forgotten about it, but now it’s picking back up. He can see Sam notice it too, watches as his head tips to track it. They scan the horizon, hands on their knives, even if they are mostly useless down here.

It starts as a cloud, just peeking over the edge of the horizon, close to the edge of the canyon but not on it. The buzzing turns into a roar, like a sandstorm in the desert, furious. Under the roar is a cacophony of other sounds.

Voices.

Human voices, although just barely recognizable. They’re screaming, pleading, choking and hacking. Seeing it is almost worse than hearing it, as soon as the hoard is close enough to see. They stumble over one another, scratching wildly at their own skin, tearing at their hair, their clothes, what little remains of either. Those left behind are covered in a black cloud, their shrieks piercing the air before cutting off just as suddenly.

Dean grabs Sam’s arm, and starts sketching a quick devil’s trap around them in the dirt with only a fool’s hope that it’ll work. The ground is hard and packed tight, he has to dig into it with the handle of his knife to make a good mark. The trap won’t last, he knows, even if it works but it might buy them some time. Sam catches on quick, finishes his half of the trap just in time for them to throw themselves down in the center and take cover.

The sound swells, drilling into his head like a jackhammer. Squeezing his ears between his arms doesn’t block it out. He can feel his teeth clattering together as the horde approaches them, and he shifts just enough to crack one eye open. Enough to see them - running, stumbling, crawling past. It’s then he realizes the swarm isn’t a cloud or smoke or a demon at all. Wasps, bees, tiny mosquitoes make up the swarm, hundreds of thousands of them, feasting on the souls as they chase them across the barren earth.

They pass by.

It takes a while for his hearing to return to normal; to hear anything other than the overwhelming crush of sound. His heart is pounding, and his eyes are stinging from the dust kicked up as they passed. He scrubs his arm across his eyes, blinking away the sting.

Far in the distance, almost completely hidden by the dust still hanging in the air, a wagon approaches. The wagon is made of the same washed out wood of the dock, it moves slowly and creaks wearily as it approaches. The donkey in front looks older than god, its coat a patchy white and its bones showing through through the skin. The figure on the cart is covered in a cloak, hunched and holding the reins loosely.

The wagon stops right next to them. The figure sits ups straight.

“Ah, fresh cargo,” it says, its voice lilting and feminine.

It drops the reins and climbs down, shaking off the hood. It’s a woman, or at least, looks like one. Her hair is the same color as the dirt underneath them, her eyes are a milky blue without pupils. Her skin looks like parchment - not old, exactly, but thin and strangely fragile.

She holds out her palm and grins, staring blankly at the space between he and Sam. “Well?”

Dean glances at Sam, at the remains of the dock next to them, and back at the woman. _Charon_ , he thinks. The ferryman. He holds out his coin and drops it into her hand; Sam follows suit. The grin disappears and so does her hand, stashing the coins away somewhere deep in her cloak. She gives the donkey a pat on the head and murmurs, “Stay.”

Then she walks up to the edge of the dock, turns around, and steps off.

It’s only when she doesn’t disappear completely that Dean realizes there must be some kind of foothold dug into the side of the canyon. She’s almost completely gone from view before she yells out to them.

“You coming or would you rather stay up here with those?” she tips her head in the direction of the horde, still visible on the far horizon.

Sam climbs over first, and Dean follows. They make their way down the side of the canyon slowly, stopping and starting over and over again as Sam and then Dean have to search and find the holds that Charon picks out with ease below them.

Dean’s hands cramp up, slick with sweat they start to slip on the hand holds, leaving more and more of the work to his legs which aren’t in much better shape.

Dean hangs on and hopes neither one of them slips. He knows the chances Charon will help them if they start to fall are slim to none. And whatever Sam may think, Dean isn’t eager to find out what happens if they go plunging to their philosophical deaths down here.

Finally the canyon starts to slope outward, becomes less steep as the handholds become shallower and shallower until there’s nothing at all. They slide down the rest of the way, skidding in the dirt and bumping over small thatches of the same pale grass as above. The ground continues to slope down for another forty feet or so, then dips beneath water that’s pitch-black.

There’s a boat pulled up just high enough to be out of the water. It’s pale, with a knobby front that widens out around a frame that’s covered in a canvas that looks like bleached and oiled leather. The back is open, and Charon grabs an oar from bottom of the boat and pushes it out into the water just far enough to leave the very back of it on land.

“Get in, if you want to cross,” she says. “I have my coin, I make the crossing with or without you.”

Dean climbs aboard, walking up the center of the boat. Sam hesitates just behind him, looking pale. Dean turns. “What? Don’t tell me you get seasick.”

“Dean - ”

Sam looks over at Charon, standing ready to push off, and takes a reluctant step forward. He crouches down in the center, eyes fixed on the lump of a figurehead at the very front of the boat. Dean hadn’t looked closely before, but he can see it better now. It’s a head. Desiccated and shrunken, and twisted around to face forward.

It isn’t until he looks at the way the neck is twisted - right at the join of the spine, that he gets Sam’s hesitation. The canvas isn’t canvas at all, but skin stretched taut over bone. The knobby center of the ship isn’t a keel. Or, it didn’t use to be.

It’s far too big to be human. He isn’t sure if that makes it better or worse.

Dean meets Sam’s eyes and nods. It’s not like they have much of a choice.

They set off with a sudden jerk forward, and soon they’re gliding along the dark waters with Charon standing at the back, water lapping around her feet, steadily dipping the oar in and out of the water on each side to guide them.

Soon the shore disappears completely, all that’s left are the mammoth walls of the canyon rising up behind them so high Dean has to crane his neck back to see the top. In front of them there’s nothing but black, oily water and empty sky. Sam and Dean stay crouched in the middle trying their best not to touch the sides for balance.

Gradually, the sky begins to darken. Even the looming walls of the canyon disappear from view.

They’re surrounded by darkness in every direction, the only light a soft glow that emerges now from the water itself. The only sound is the gentle lapping of the water against Charon’s paddle.

 

*

 

 _May 2007_  
_Lincoln, Nebraska_

 

Once the flames had died down, Tamara had left with with barely a word to any of them.

Dean knows she blames them for Isaac’s death - for all the deaths, really. They hadn’t forced him into the bar, or handed him the drano, but they might as well have. It’s their fault Yellow Eyes got his hands on the Colt. Their fault they hadn’t found a way to off Yellow Eyes before the gate opened. Their fault the world was crawling with demons.

Dean kicks at the cooling ashes from the pyre. Pours out a little Jim Beam for Isaac’s memory. He hadn’t really known the guy, but a fellow hunter was a fellow hunter, all the same.

Sam comes out of the house, hands in his pockets and a pinched look on his face. Dean still doesn’t know exactly what happened between him and John at the hospital after Blue Earth, but he does know that Sam only came along for the hunt on this one because Bobby had asked. Not John.

Dean offers up the bottle and watches out of the corner of his eye as Sam takes a swig.

Sam hands it back and clears his throat. “What really happened, out in Cold Oak? The truth, this time.”

Not this again. “You should ask your dad.”

“Maybe, but I’m asking you instead. It wasn’t just the explosion, I remember that. I remember you running towards me, and then just… cold.”

 _No, you were still warm when I left_ , Dean thinks. He can remember pressing his fingers to Sam’s neck, feeling the pulse slow, and slow, and stop. He remembers letting go of the body. Something in his expression must give him away, because he sees recognition dawn on Sam’s face.

“I died, didn’t I,” Sam says, and it’s not a question, not at first. “I was dead?”

“There was a piece of glass. It was Max, I didn’t know he was there - ” now that they’re out, the words won’t stop spilling, “it just shot at you, right into your back. I don’t even think you felt it, it was so fast.”

“And then?”

“And then you were gone. Yellow Eyes showed up, told me I was next unless I went where he told me. So I went.”

The admission leaves him hollow. He hadn’t felt any particular loyalty to Sam, not then. He’d had a hundred brothers and sisters growing up, one group home to the next, so many he barely remembers the names. He’d been close to a few of them, but more often than not they’d kept to their own business and he’d kept to his. You learned quick not to get close.

Until he’d run into John, at least. John was the tether that looped him into a whole net of people - from Pastor Jim ( _don’t think about it_ ) to Bobby to Ellen and on. It linked him to Sam, made him responsible in a way that he couldn’t put into words; hadn’t realized was there until he’d failed at it, feeling Sam’s life drain away beat by beat.

Maybe there’s a little bit more there than he’d like to admit. They’d fought side by side in Cold Oak, and now Dean was here, telling Sam things he’d sworn to John that he wouldn’t.

“So you left for Wyoming, and the next time you saw me was at the gate?”

Dean shakes his head. “Didn’t see you there. I was so out of it I don’t think I even noticed anyone other than Yellow Eyes and Max.”

Sam seems to be mulling it over. “He did something, didn’t he?” There’s no question who the ‘he’ is.

“It really isn’t my business to tell.”

“Right.”

Just like that the conversation is over. Dean knows Sam will keep picking at the wound, poking and prodding until the whole truth is laid bare before him. But Dean’s had enough of feeling pulled apart for one day, so he tips out the rest of the bottle over the ashes of Isaac’s pyre and heads back to the house.

He knows Sam is going to have more questions.

Sam has his number.

 

*

 

John is busy inside with the rest of the clean up - wiping down away their prints and mopping up blood.

It isn’t a pretty job, and with the body count up as high as it is there’s no way they’ll erase all of it, but they’ve got to at least try. After all, Sam's probably the only one of them that doesn’t have his prints on file for one reason or another. John and Bobby are both pretty careful, but even so there’s still a few states they each tend to avoid if they can. And Dean’s definitely got a couple of no-fly zones of his own. But the house is way outside of town, so they’ve got at least a few days before anyone gets suspicious and comes knocking. Enough time for them to get good and gone.

“Fire’s out?” John asks without looking up when Dean comes inside.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Dean hesitates. “Sam’s asking questions.”

“About?”

“You know what about.”

John stops. He spends a half minute staring down at his hands - there are ridges of dried blood lining his knuckles, in the divots between his fingers. He looks up at Dean. “And?”

“And he’s gonna figure it out. You know he is. He’s gonna figure it out and if he doesn’t hear it from you he’s gonna be pissed as hell.”

“He’s already pissed as hell. Pissed off but alive, and I don’t care about much else right now. We’ve got bigger problems to deal with.”

The bitch of it is, he’s right. The seven deadly sins are done and dusted, but that’s only seven out of god-knows how many they let loose.

Dean nods. “So we keep at the job. Keep going until we’ve sent every last one of them back where they belong.”

“That starts with finishing up this job first.” John tosses him a spare rag. “Wipe down everything you touched in the bathroom.”

Dean heads to the back, a little steadier than he’s been in days. Finding out about the time limit on John’s deal had knocked him for a loop. It was easier to think about in the abstract - yeah, one day John would die and one day his soul would go to hell.

That was a whole lot different from having a concrete number of days. Three-hundred and fifty-seven, wait no... fifty-six. Three-hundred and fifty-six days from now and Dean is on his own again.

If John wants to spend his remaining time hunting, then Dean is going to be right there with him.

 

*

 

_June 2007_

 

Sam meets up with them on a case in Cicero, Indiana. Dean doesn’t ask why, just knows that Sam texted him to ask where they were and then showed up in town two days later. He and John exchange silent nods and carry on like they haven’t been avoiding each other for the past month. Dean ignores it and throws his attention into the case.

Something is hopscotching from one town to the next, replacing kids with monster babies and offing the parents. They run into another hunter on the trail, or a hunter in the making at least. Dean and Sam are busy driving around checking out a mostly-vacant housing development while John is off checking out the next town over with the new hunter, Lisa.

Dean ignores a bite of annoyance at that. He knows it’s just a matter of strategy. No way John would send Sam out with nothing but some newbie for backup, and if Dean went with her that would leave John and Sam butting heads. They’re barely talking now as is.

Still, Dean hadn’t missed the flicker of understanding from John when Lisa had told them she was trying to save her kid. There’s some kind of kinship there - a shared experience, and it’s not anything Dean can match.

“We need to talk,” Sam says. Dean’s almost grateful for the way it breaks his train of thought.

“About what?”

“A lot of things.”

“Now? Kinda busy right now with the whole monster-hunting thing.”

They cut across the lawn to the next house over. The whole neighborhood creeps him out - the manicured lawns, all the houses mirror images of one another. Minivans and two car garages and two-point-five kids. Dean counts down the row, five more houses to go on this block and then they can move on to the next one.

“Not now,” Sam says. “But after, okay?”

“You sure this isn’t a conversation you should be having with your dad?”

Sam doesn’t answer. They sweep two more houses in silence before Dean feels his phone vibrate.

It’s John. “We got her.”

“Everyone okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine. If you could put in a call to the local PD with an anonymous tip that’d be helpful. We got a bunch of scared kids here.”

“On it. We’ll head your way, be there in about about forty-five.”

Dean hangs up and they both leg it back to the car. Sam uses a burner phone to call the cops. They’re on the road barely two minutes before Sam breaks the silence.

“I know he made a deal.”

Dean stays quiet. Sam isn’t asking for confirmation.

“I know he found me - in Cold Oak. I know he went to a crossroads and buried his picture. I know he’s got a year left.” Sam’s voice is dead calm in a way that gives Dean chills. “And I know from the look on your face that none of this is news to you.”

Sam glances over and Dean shakes his head. Sam’s hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He cranks the wheel over to the side and stops the car short.

“Was he planning to tell me? Were you?”

“He made me swear not to.”

“What the fuck does that matter?”

“It matters to me, asshole. You got a problem with it fine, but your real issue is with him, not me. I don’t owe you anything, so back the fuck off.”

They both sit in silence for a minute, staring ahead at the pavement.

“He should’ve left it alone. Left me dead.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a little late for that now.”

What Dean doesn’t say is that it wouldn’t have mattered. Losing Mary had almost killed the man. With Sam gone too, John wouldn’t have survived. It might have taken a few weeks, or a few days, Dean couldn’t say for sure how long it would take for the kamikaze act that would follow to end with bang. John was dead either way.

“How’d you find out?”

Sam snorts. “Demons. There’s so many walking around topside now and every last one wants to brag about being the one that made the deal. That, and I’ve got a source. Someone who knows a lot about how they work.”

“You know that if we break the deal, you die.”

“I know. I don’t care.” Sam turns in his seat and looks over Dean’s expression with a speculative eye. “So you looked into it?”

“Much as I could, without him catching on. He’d kill me if he found out I even thought about it. Sam, there’s no lore I could find about how to break the deal. Nothing. And even if we did... ”

Even if they did manage it, there’s no way John would leave it be. He’d already sold his soul once to get Sam back. There was no telling what he’d do a second time around.

“There’s a way. I know there is. All I’ve gotta do is find it.”

“Okay, okay I get it. And don’t take this the wrong way but I’ve gotta ask, I mean... you barely even talk to the guy. Every time I see you two together you’re either barely talking or at each other’s throats. What gives?”

Sam brow wrinkles, like he doesn’t understand the question. “He’s my dad. I mean, yeah we fight, but that doesn’t make us not family. It doesn’t mean I’m just going to watch him die for me and not try to stop it.”

He looks like he wants to say more but he doesn’t. It dawns on Dean that it’s probably something he won’t ever understand, having family like that, and maybe that’s what Sam is too tactful to point out.

They drive in silence until they hit the next town. Dean catches sight of the Impala, parked at the end of the block where John and Lisa torched the mother changeling.

“Hey Sam,” Dean says. “You find anything - any way to save his ass - you let me know, okay? I’m in.”

Sam gives him a long look and then nods.

 

*

 

 _June 2008_  
_(Present)_

 

Charon has stopped paddling.

The water no longer laps gently against the sides of the boat, instead it glides swiftly past, smooth and slick like oil. He hadn’t noticed at first, the way the sky must have darkened slowly, until it’s impossible to pick out the horizon. There’s a certain weightlessness to it; a feeling like the boat is the only real thing floating in the void. The air is different too, thicker and damp now. He can feel the fabric of his shirt sticking to his back. In the dark he can just barely pick out the slick gleam of the skin of the boat.

Sam is right behind him, a steady presence at his back. Although he’s slumped over now, staring out ahead with half-lidded eyes. Everything here is heavy, dark. Weighted down with time, and hopelessness, and longing.

Dean fights to stay awake, knows that he cannot possibly justify napping through a trip into hell. The thought makes Dean slightly giddy, imagining John’s face if he knew. He’d get that look in his eyes that meant he was feeling too old for this shit, muttering “Jesus, kid.”

And Dean would smile all the brighter, just to piss him off, and if John tugged his jeans down a little rougher than usual, used his mouth to bite more than kiss, well, that would be just fine.

He blinks slowly, feels the weight of his eyelids, the curious feeling that the very air he’s breathing in is somehow… murky.

“Sam?”

It comes out more like a muffled “...smm?” than he intended, and suddenly Dean realizes that the air really is thick enough that it’s getting hard to breath. He shoots upright, shocked at the feeling of pressure weighing him down as he struggles to straighten up. He flails one arm behind him, smacking haphazardly at Sam’s legs and hears a muted shuffle as Sam moves. Dean tries to turn his head groggily around to squint at Charon.

She’s still standing at the back, the oar cradled loosely in one hand, seemingly unaffected. Sam is staring out ahead at something Dean can only guess at, he hasn’t seen anything but water and sky in what feels like hours.

 _What_ \- he starts to say, but no sound comes out. Instead, a gush of the thick, fetid air fills his lungs and he chokes on it. Sam is in a similar state behind him, one hand clutching at the base of his throat, the veins on his neck standing out as his eyes dart around, trying to understand.

The world turns over. Suddenly he is fighting, thrashing in the boat, his legs suspended above him and his arms pinwheeling around, trying to find an anchor. Sam almost kicks him in the gut, his hands scratching along the stretched skin of the hull of the boat. Among it all, he catches a glimpse of Charon, still standing in the stern of the boat as if nothing has happened, although now she is upside down, or she is right side up and he is upside down, he can’t tell.

Sam grabs at his jacket, tugging it hard and pointing past Dean’s head. His mouth opens wide, one word that Dean can’t hear but understands nonetheless -

_“Go!”_

 

*

 

When they break the surface the only thing Dean hears is his own gasping breath. Water clogs his ears, seeps down the collar of his shirt and it belatedly occurs to Dean that he is wet. Not just wet, but soaked to the skin, wading in the black water he’d been so careful to avoid earlier.

“You okay?” Sam gasps.

“Peachy.”

Dean looks around for the boat, but the horizon is empty. There’s nothing but water around them, and a thin line of coast off in the distance.

“Son of a bitch.”

He slaps at the water.

“Dean, look.” Sam points into the water, maybe a few yards away.

He can’t see much, just a knobby pale shape that barely breaks the surface. They watch in silence as the shape slowly turns around and heads back, presumably the way it came.

It’s the bottom hull of Charon’s boat, gliding along under the water, upside down. Dean is half-tempted to go under and try to follow, if only to tip the boat over and see what happens, but it occurs to him that if he goes back now he might not be able to get back to this side of things. Whichever side this is.

“And I repeat, son of a bitch.”

“Well, at least we made it this far,” Sam shrugs, looking oddly relaxed. “C’mon.”

They set off at a slow pace, swimming towards the thin strip of shore. Dean doesn’t think about what’s in the water, what he’s read. He doesn’t think about the tightness in his chest or the ache in his shoulders and legs, or how far away the shore looks. They swim.

They reach the shore sooner than he expected; although it’s not totally surprising, with no markers for scale there’s no way to really judge the distances here. The spit of land is little more than a triangle wedged between two towering cliffs. A thin, winding path is cut into the stone between the cliffs, weaving its way upwards.

Dean and Sam crawl ashore, collapsing on their backs.

“I don’t know who’s in charge of all this, but they’ve seriously got to reconsider their infrastructure. That’s one hell of a commute.”

Sam huffs out a laugh next to him. It’s not really all that funny, but Sam’s probably just as exhausted and delirious as he is by this point.

“I think people who are actually dead get the express treatment. We’re sneaking in the back way.” Sam waves a hand around vaguely, Dean can see in the corner of his eye. Dean starts to snicker.

Sam’s hand drops to the ground. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Seriously, what?”

Dean bites his lips together, can’t explain why everything is suddenly hilarious. _“Highway to hell.”_

Sam snorts, and then dissolves into silent laughter next to him. They lay there on the shores of Styx, defenseless, lost, and helpless with laughter. It isn’t a happy laugh, it is distinctly morbid - they are both wholly aware that how far they’ve come is nothing compared to what comes next.

But there’s something about all of it, every piece of hopelessness and desperation and helplessness, that means the only thing either of them can do now is laugh. Dean isn’t sure how long they spend there, only that it feels like too long and not nearly long enough before they’re picking themselves up off the ground and stumbling up towards the steep stone steps.

 

*

 

The cliffs rise up on either side, high enough that Dean can barely make out the ridges at the top. The path is maybe five feet across, and it makes Dean’s neck itch just to walk through it. There’s no cover here, only two directions to retreat and barely any room to maneuver if they’re attacked.

The gate - if you could call it that - is little more than two jagged black spires reaching upwards, like drip-sand castles kids make at the beach.

“Huh,” is all Sam says.

“You were expecting something different?”

Sam makes a face. _“Lasciate ogni speranza?”_

“Nerd.”

“You know what I mean, though. Abandon all hope, ye who enter?”

“I think this is a case of Mr. Dante reading between the lines. I mean, it may not be carved in stone but that is pretty much the idea, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Dean cocks his head. “Now or never, I guess.”

They step through together.

 

*

 

There’s a hairline crack in the ceiling above him, running the length of the room. Probably from the house settling onto its foundation over decades. Dean digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to wipe away the grit and the pounding headache. He’s thirsty and exhausted and he has to take a piss.

“- the fuck?” Dean asks the room at large.

Sam is on the floor next to him, breathing deeply and staring up at the ceiling with wide, unblinking eyes.

“ _Holy hell_ , boys." It’s Bobby, sounding oddly strained.

“Glad you made it back.” And there’s Ruby. her voice is shot to hell and she sounds distinctly unimpressed. Probably disappointed they made it back at all, Dean thinks.

He sits up, too quickly for the way his head is pounding, and glances around the room.

“What the hell happened?”

Ruby snaps her spell book shut and raises an eyebrow. “You tell us, tweedledum. I did my bit, sent you straight down to the pit and kept you there. You were out maybe ten hours, not nearly long enough to get what you went in for. So why the hell are you back?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. We’d just made it to the gate.”

“The gate. Are you fucking with me right now? You made it to the front door of hell and what, suddenly remembered you left the oven on?”

Sam’s upright, sitting on the floor with his elbows braced on his knees and one hand pinching the bridge of his nose like he’s warding off a migraine. “We didn’t do anything to snap us out, Ruby. Maybe it takes practice to stay down?”

“Well that’s fantastic,” Dean says. “One trip wasted and we didn’t even get through the gate. We haven’t even started looking for him yet, and correct me if I’m wrong but I’m guessing the entirety of hell isn’t exactly a small town where everyone knows your name.”

“Oh calm down, drama queen,” Ruby says. “You have six more trips to go and it’s not like you have to start right back at the beginning. It’s a journey of the soul, not the Oregon-freaking-Trail. But next time if you could try to accomplish something, I don’t know, _actually useful_ while you’re down there, that’d be a big help.”

She rolls her eyes at them and stalks out of the room. A second later the front door slams and she’s gone.

Bobby looks them over with a calculating expression. “You boys feel okay?”

“A little rough maybe, but okay.” Sam looks over at Dean for confirmation. Dean shrugs and gives Bobby a nod.

“It might be some kinda biological limit, how long you can spend down there. Your bodies can only live and breathe for so long on their own without you in ‘em, even with her spell,” Bobby says.

It makes sense, but it’s not exactly welcome news. Yeah, they have six more trips downstairs with Ruby’s juju and the hex bags, but there was no telling how long it'll take to find John, and they had even less of an idea how long it might take them to find a way to bust him out. Dean didn’t know much about the inner workings of hell, but he was guessing you couldn’t just nab a condemned soul and walk out easy as you please.

“So what, Bobby, we hook ourselves up to IV fluids and get comfy?” Dean says.

“Exactly how many times you think I’ve done this before? I’ve got no damn clue, but it might be a start if that really is what kicked you topside.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” Sam says slowly. “There’s a pull, didn’t you feel it? I think - I think it’s like our souls want to go back. Like snapping a rubber band.”

“I kinda assumed that was just a general aversion to being in hell.”

“It’d make sense,” Bobby says. “How many ghosts get stuck by their own remains? There’s a pretty strong natural connection between souls and bodies. You boys should be grateful for it too, otherwise who the hell knows how we’d get you both back topside.”

“You think it’s something we can fight? If ten hours is the limit, even with six more trips, we’re gonna need more time.” Sam stops to shake his head. “You didn’t see it, Bobby. The scale of it, it’s just - ”

But Sam doesn’t finish the thought, and Dean has no particular desire to chip in. Dean is still rubbing the ache out of his eyes when Sam stands up and heads for the door.

“I’ll go find Ruby, talk her around so we can keep going.”

“Keep going - Sam, are you nuts? You just woke up from a trip to hell. Take a night off. He’s not exactly going anywhere,” Bobby says. None of them will say John’s name.

Sam looks like he’s about to argue but Bobby just holds up a hand. “Please. Just take a night to recoup. If you go in too soon you might be wasting a trip for nothing anyway. Let’s try to be at least a little smart about this.”

Dean snorts at that. Bobby had made it pretty clear what he thought of this whole idea, and it’s good that he’s willing to help, but it wasn’t exactly on the best of terms.

Still, they need him to watch their backs while they’re down under, and there’s no way Dean is trusting Ruby to do it, no matter what Sam says.

 

*

 

 _September 2007_  
_Maple Springs, New York_

 

Dean stops short just inside the diner and flashes a look at Sam, who’s sitting with his back to the wall in a corner booth. There’s a blond chick with him, giving off a vibe Dean has learned not to ignore.

Sam meets his eyes, nods his head slowly. Yes, he knows she’s a demon. Yes, he still somehow expects Dean to come sit down and play nice. Dean takes his time walking over, slides into the booth next to Sam, facing the girl. Or what used to be a girl.

The demon looks up from a plate of fries and gives him a once over. “So this must be Tweedledum.”

“Ruby - ”

“Calm down, Sam, I can make my own friends.”

“Oh honey, you and I are not gonna be friends. I promise you.” Dean shoots another look at Sam. Is he serious about this?

“That was kind of my point,” she says.

Dean rips open a salt packet from the tray of condiments and pours a thin line across the table.

Ruby gives him a distinctly unimpressed look and eats another fry. “Didn’t your Mama ever tell you not to play with your food? Oh wait -”

“Will both of you stop?” Sam says, hands splayed over the table. “We’re not going to accomplish anything if you keep this up.”

Neither one of them speaks up, so Sam continues. “Dean, listen. Ruby can help us. And right now, we need all the help we can get.”

Dean doesn’t take his eyes off the demon. “And what, she’s helping us out of the goodness of her pure little heart?”

“I’m helping because I want to, and I don’t owe you an explanation. Sam, I told you this was a bad idea. We don’t need him to do this.”

“Don’t need me to do what?”

“Gee, I don’t know - save John, maybe?” Ruby says.

“You’re going to help us break John’s deal. Right.”

“Think what you want, but I was the one who told Sam the truth while you were still busy lying to him about Cold Oak. So far your definition of ‘helping’ doesn’t seem all that helpful, does it?”

Dean opens his mouth to respond but Sam interrupts.

“We need to know the exact terms of the deal so we can figure out how to break it,” Sam says. “Ruby says it’s more complicated than just ‘one year, no takebacks.’ There’s a ritual we can do to see the terms, but he has to be present for it. Dean, you’re with him all the time anyway. You do the ritual, copy down everything and send it over to me so I can keep digging.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him? Hey, just stand in that ring of candles over there while I get out my notepad? C’mon Sam, you know he’s not gonna go for that.”

“Which is why we’re also giving you this.” Ruby pulls a small vial out of her jacket and sets it down on the table.

“You’re even crazier than I thought if you think I’m slipping him anything that came from your skeevy paws.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Fine. I’ll take a dose first, prove to you it’s safe.”

“Are you nuts? No!”

Before Dean can grab it off the table, Sam uncaps the vial and downs half of it.

Dean and Ruby both stare at Sam as he swallows and sways a bit.

“Oh woah, that’s kinda - ” Sam slumps over and Ruby catches the vial just as his hand goes limp. The waitress serving the next table over looks over at them, mouth gaping. Dean winces.

“Narcolepsy, happens all the time. He’ll be fine.” He turns around and hisses through his teeth at Ruby, _“he fucking better be fine.”_

“He’s just unconscious, stop freaking out. I know what I’m doing. Although with half the dose now wasted on sleeping beauty here, you’re gonna have to work quick when you do the ritual on John to get the contract copied over.”

She picks up the last fry from the plate and uses it to wipe up the remaining ketchup before popping it into her mouth. Dean eyes the salt from the fries clinging to her fingers.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

She sucks one finger into her mouth and licks it clean, then grins. “Burns like sriracha. But spicier.”

“You’re a whole hardware store full of nuts, you know that?”

Ruby ignores him, casually tugging a clean napkin out from under Sam’s cheek and wiping the grease and salt from her fingers.

 

*

 

 _October 2007_  
_New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania_

 

Dean still has the Ruby’s vial tucked away in his jacket, half full. He’s been dodging Sam’s calls for the last three weeks, caught between willing to do doing anything to save John and knowing full well what John would say if he had any idea they were putting their trust in a demon for help.

Back in New York the waitress at the diner had kept bugging them to ask when Sam would wake up. Dean had made muttered excuses about him sleeping it off better in his own bed and they’d carried Sam back to his car, leaving him keeled over in the backseat.

He’d woken up maybe an hour later, confused but otherwise fine.

“Happy now?” Ruby had asked.

“No.” So her little hoodoo-roofie worked out okay. It still didn’t mean Dean trusted the bitch.

But Sam wouldn’t stop with the damn voicemails.

_“Dean, please. I know you don’t trust her, okay, but trust me instead. Just - what if there’s a way to save him and we don’t find it because we didn’t take the risk? Because we didn’t at least try? Just try, that’s all I’m asking. Please.”_

And what it boils down to is that it’s been six months and they’ve got jack shit on how to save John. Six months gone, six months to go, and no progress to show for it. Dean can see the deadline ticking down in John eyes, even if John thinks he doesn’t know it. Every touch is counted as the something-to-last one. No telling yet how many they’ve got left.

He’d like to say he takes the three weeks to consider the situation carefully, weigh the options of potential success against certain failure. In reality he carries the vial in his pocket like guilt for three weeks, dreading the decision before him every time his hand brushes up against the vial in his pocket, or the packet of notes on the ritual he keeps tucked away.

And in the end it comes down to a split second. He pops open a beer for himself and another for John to celebrate the end of a case, and suddenly the choice is laid bare before him. He tips the vial into John’s beer without thinking. Without pausing to give himself time to think.

John accepts the beer with a grunt, sitting at the end of the bed nearest the door.

Dean catches him as he starts to lean forward, grabbing the beer and setting it down on the carpet. He pushes John back so he’s laying face-up on the bed, knees bent and feet still on the floor. Good enough.

Dean’s had the steps memorized for weeks, not out of a sense of preparation - more like just another way to procrastinate. The symbols he needs are all pre-drawn on post it notes - one part speed and the other for a fast clean up. He lays them down on the floor, one after another, feels the pulse of them as the candles start to burn brighter.

John’s blood goes into the fire, a small nick on his forearm that Dean is hoping will go unnoticed. A tuft of hair. Dean sprinkles crushed charcoal over John’s brow. It sinks into his skin and disappears.

Then, the words start to appear.

The script is tightly packed and not English, not as far as Dean can tell. It starts just at John’s hairline and continues down his brow to his cheeks, over the bridge of his nose, past his jaw and down his neck.

Dean swallows. It keeps going. He unbuttons John’s shirt and peels it off to either side in an attempt to keep up. It’s appearing faster now - across his shoulders, over his ribcage - curls of letters looping over the ends of his fingertips, over his stomach and down. He yanks off John’s boots and socks just in time to find the last traces of the contract filling in the divots between his toes, winding across the arches of his feet.

“Shit. Shit shit shit.”

It’s too much - too much to copy in an hour. Dean unceremoniously yanks off John's pants and boxers, then grabs a blank notebook and a Bic and starts writing.

His hand starts to cramp after only a few minutes, and his eyes hurt from squinting at the language, trying to make out the letters. The handwriting is at least familiar - one Dean would recognize anywhere. John’s own.

There are sections to it; that much he can tell. They’re labelled and interwoven, one part referring to the next and previous. He doesn’t have time to figure how they all fit together, not right now, so he labels the sections as he sees them: face, neck, right arm. He turns on all the lights, tipping the lampshades back to get just a little bit more light.

“Almost got it,” he murmurs to himself. Taking a second to stretch out his fingers.

The script seems to ripple before him, wavering like a candle flame about to go out. Dean stiffens; doesn’t dare to breathe until the moment passes, and it isn’t until then he realizes it wasn’t the words that moved.

It’s John, tensing. Starting to wake up.

John’s eyes blink open, unfocused. There’s no point stopping now. If John wakes up anything like the way Sam did back in New York, then Dean’s still got a few precious minutes before he can move. Before he can sit up and ask Dean what the hell he thinks he’s doing.

In the meantime, John’s probably freaking the fuck out.

“Just a few more minutes, we’re almost there,” he says, mostly just so John can hear his voice.

He scribbles out the last word and scans over John one last time to make sure he got everything. The notebook gets stashed at the bottom of his pack, and he pulls out a bag of fine, pale sand. He sprinkles the sand over John, starting at his toes and working his way up. Everywhere the script covered. Dean sends up a silent thanks to whoever is listening that the script only covered every inch of his front, curling around his sides but not far enough that Dean needed to flip him over.

Dean leans over John, touches his temple. “Close your eyes.”

He sprinkles the last bit of sand over John’s face, muttering the words that will wipe the slate clean. The words on John’s skin blur like wet ink underneath the sand. Dean grabs a starch stiff washcloth from the bathroom and wipes it away, one inch of newly-clean skin at a time.

He blows out the candles, noticing the twitch in John’s fingers and toes. Time’s up.

“Dean, wha-” John coughs and swallows, voice rough. “What the hell?”

Dean sits heavily on the other bed. His eyes are dry and throbbing from squinting at the tight script, and his entire right hand is cramping up. “I know, sorry. You weren’t supposed to wake up.”

John sits up slowly, running one hand down his chest. Probably feeling bits of sand that Dean missed with the washcloth. It’s fine, as long as he didn’t missing wiping away any of the words. God, if only it was that easy to wipe the whole slate clean. No words, no deal. Magic.

John is watching him. Waiting for an explanation that Dean doesn’t have.

“Right, okay,” he says, wiping his hands together. He doesn’t want to do this, but the thought’s been niggling at the back of his mind since the moment he realized John was waking up. “You’re gonna _go back to sleep now,_ and _you won’t remember any of this_ when you wake up.”

The look that passes over John’s face in the second before the compulsion sets in will haunt Dean for weeks.

 

*

 

 _June 2008_  
_(Present)_

 

Just past the gate there’s a winding path of steps carved into the side of the cliff face. Sam takes the lead, head bowed against the wind and shoulders hunched. Dean fists one hand in the back of Sam’s shirt, not to hold him back but as an anchor for both of them against the wind.

A thick mass of storm clouds blankets the sky beneath them, hundreds of feet down, maybe more. Flashes of lightning and thunder crack through the air, the light only visible as a brief spark through the muddy clouds, the thunder shaking the very ground beneath them. Strong gusts of wind howl past, twisting the tops of the clouds into something sharp and angry.

The descent is slow, and each step brings them closer to the storm. They keep on a steady pace, feet shuffling along the packed earth and smooth stone, bracing themselves against the cliff face to ride out the stronger gales and rumbles of earth-shattering thunder.

They’re just barely above the cloud line when Dean gives Sam’s shirt a couple tugs to call him to a halt.

“Put one down here, you think?” Dean yells over the storm.

Sam looks at him with squinting eyes. He doesn’t answer, just scans his eyes over the horizon and nods emphatically.

Sam pulls out his knife and painstakingly scratches a symbol into the stone. He pricks the tip of his finger and traces over the rune, and they watch as it disappears.

“Let’s hope that works the way it’s supposed to,” Sam yells.

The descent was bad, but the storm itself is far worse. They’re pelted with icy rain, so cold it feels like knives cutting through Dean's clothes. They stick close, side by side now that the path is just barely wide enough for it, shoulder to shoulder and hands clenched in each other's sleeves.

They don’t speak, don’t stop to rest, don’t look at anything but the next step ahead. Dean can’t tell how long it takes; long enough to forget the feel of own skin when it’s not drenched and freezing, long enough to forget hearing anything but the howl of wind and the sharp crack of thunder.

Sam bumps his shoulder when they finally reach a landing of sorts, shaking with cold he tips his chin forward and down at the scene below. Dean can’t tell what he’s seeing at first. It looks like a boiling ocean, or sand thrown about by the raging storm, crashing against the cliff face and falling only to be picked up once again and tossed the opposite way.

Except they’re not grains of sand. They’re souls.

As far as the eye can see, souls writhing in an ocean whipped by the wind, thrown up by the tide, tearing at themselves and each other in the chaos, fighting to the top only to be flung aside by the careless wind. Dean stares, a loud ringing filling his ears and blocking out all other sound. His hand slips its hold on Sam’s sleeve.

“Sam,” he mutters to himself, not expecting to be heard. He doesn’t even hear it himself.

When he looks back, Sam is staring out at the mass of humanity. Horror, amazement, and dread all warring for dominance in his expression. Sam tears his gaze away from the scene below and meets Dean’s eyes.

“We’re never gonna find him,” Dean says. He knows Sam can’t possibly hear the words, but the crux of it must be clear because he can see Sam brace himself in response.

Sam’s expression hardens. He grabs Dean’s shoulder and gives him a solid shake, looking back out at the storm with his mouth set in a firm line. The meaning is clear. They have a job to do.

 

*

 

“Sam, look,” Dean smacks at Sam’s arm and points ahead.

The steep slope of the cliff stretches out as far as they can see, broken only by the thin path cut across it, gradually sloping downwards into the chaos. Just below the path, far off in the distance, is a tiny figure clinging to the side of the sheer cliff face.

“Let’s go.”

They set off again, no more comfortable than before, but at least used to the driving wind and rain and cacophony of sound and now with a goal in sight. When they get close enough to see more clearly, they can see the figure looks like a woman, with long hair draped in a matted mass down her back. Her arms and legs are spider thin and corded, clutching with her very fingertips at the thinnest of cracks and crevices in the stone.

“Help me!” She screams when she sees them, her voice like a screech of metal-on-metal. Her eyes are wild, her skin drained of color. The tips of her fingers are barely more than bloody stumps.

Sam crouches down near the edge, close enough to look her in the eye but not close enough to reach.

“Tell us how to find a soul,” he says.

She answers with a guttural cry that reverberates off the stone and makes Dean’s heart stutter.

Sam visibly bites down on a flinch, but when he speaks his voice is deadly calm. “We’ll help you, but only if you help us first.”

But she’s too far gone to hear him. Dean shrugs and gets down on the ground, looking back as Sam braces his legs, and he levers one arm over the abyss. She grabs at him with blood slick hands, clenching down like the bite of claws against his skin despite the lack of fingernails, yanking so hard for one heart-stopping moment he can feel himself slipping over the edge. But Sam has him, gripping Dean’s legs tight to keep him anchored. Together they manage to heave the woman up over the ledge and dump her onto the path.

She scrabbles away from them immediately; crab-walking back until she hits the far side of the path, back pressed up against the rough cut of stone.

“Hey,” Sam’s still in a crouch, hands up and palms out. “What’s your name?”

She snaps her mouth shut.

“Okay, that’s fine. Listen, we helped you and now we could really use your help in return. Fair’s fair, right?”

She stares straight at Sam, mouth curling up into a crooked grin. “You.”

She turns to Dean and spits, surging forward and kicking out, trying to send Dean back over the edge. Sam wrenches her away with one arm and sends her sprawling back into the cliff face.

Dean wipes a hand over his face. “Yeah, you’re welcome, bitch.”

Sam gives him an exasperated look. Yes, they need her help, but she’s also clearly batshit insane. Dean doesn’t really blame her; who knows how long she’s been in the pit. But was the spitting really necessary? Dean shudders, half mystified by his own reaction. Still, hell cooties. Ugh.

Sam is frowning. When he speaks again his voice is different. Not unkind, but this time it’s laced with power.

“We’re looking for someone, someone who made a deal to get down here. _Tell us where those souls go._ ”

She stares at them for so long Dean thinks she didn’t understand the question. Then she turns around, huddled in against the cliff face, tracing one finger over the wall over and over again. After a minute she jerks backwards, spares a quick glance up at Sam and Dean, then takes off up the path behind them, moving faster than Dean would’ve thought possible.

What’s left behind is a symbol, scrawled onto the wall in blood and disappearing fast under the torrent of rain.

 

*

 

Sam traces it over and over on a blank page in his notebook.

Ruby stands over him with her arms crossed. “If you two meatheads are done with your ancient runes book club, I’d like to actually get on with this before our time runs out.”

“Or instead of being a dick, you could actually cut the crap and try helping us,” Dean suggests.

“You don’t even know what that symbol is, or who the girl was, not that it matters,” Ruby says. “She was in hell for who knows how long, in the pit, being tortured. She’s a bucket full of crazy, case closed. Let’s move on.”

“No.” Sam’s voice is rough from lack of use. “It means something, I know it. I can feel it. It’s old, like, _proto-Vinča_ old. And you saw her face, right? She was terrified of telling us.”

Dean hedges. “Sam, she was in hell. If she weren’t terrified it’d be weird. And what the hell is proto-vin-huh?”

“Really old crap,” Bobby chimes in. “Old enough we can’t tell what the hell it means. You can’t translate something that predates all other written language. I’ve tried.”

“So what, we go down there with a stack of leaflets - have you seen this demon, please call?”

“Might not even be a demon,” Bobby says.

“Come again?”

Bobby spreads his hands wide. “There are things a lot older than demons in the pit. Who the hell knows what this thing is.”

“Well, whatever it is right now it’s our only lead, Bobby. We have to find it.”

 

*

 

 _January 2008_  
_Sturbridge, Massachusetts_

 

Dean slips out while John’s in the shower. It’s raining, because of-fucking-course it is. At least it isn’t snow. He flips up the collar to keep at least some of the rain from dripping down his neck, glad he’d stolen John’s jacket on the way out the door.

Two blocks down there’s an old Buick parked behind the convenience store, someone leaning against the front bumper. Not who he was expecting.

“Where’s Sam?”

“He’s fine, you can untwist your panties,” Ruby says.

“Great, well, when you see him you let him know I’m around, okay?” Dean turns to leave.

“He’s not coming. He’s busy working a job, and he doesn’t know I’m here.”

“And?”

“You need to leave. Tell John whatever lie works, grab your shit and go. Now.”

Dean laughs. “Right. Sorry but I think we can handle a few kitchen witches, and I don’t take orders from you.”

“I’m not talking about witches, jackass. I’m talking about who they serve. Demons. Like, oh say, the ones who hold John’s contract? His deal is for one year, sure, but if he kicks it early guess where his soul goes? One way ticket, Dean. No lines, no waiting.”

“You’re telling me they’re looking to collect early?”

“You know, you’re so suspicious of me, but it would be great if you could direct all that cynicism somewhere useful. They’re _demons_. Of course they’re looking to stack the deck. And for whatever reason, they want John’s soul downstairs bad.”

Dean hesitates. He could send her back to hell with a word, but Sam would probably find out and kick his ass for it. Plus, there’s a pretty strong possibility that Sam could raise her right back up at this point with little more than a thought. Summoning a demon out of hell is actually pretty straightforward, if you’ve got the name and the right supplies. It’s even easier if you can just reach out your hand and command it.

If they could just track down the name of demon that held John’s contract, they’d be set, Dean thinks wryly.

“Do you know who we’re up against in this town?”

“No. I just know that whatever it is, it’s powerful.”

She’s lying, Dean realizes with a jolt. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he doesn’t doubt that it’s true.

“Why do you care?”

“Honestly? I don’t. But Sam does, and saving John is all that’s keeping him going right now. So if you could be a real peach and try your best not to get him killed, that’d be awesome.”

“Don’t try to tell me you care about Sam.”

“I do, actually, not that you’d believe me. But there’s something else maybe you will believe - Azazel left a power vacuum when he died. As the last ones standing, one of you two chuckleheads was supposed to fill it. Take command. And sorry to say it Dean, but you always were the runner up.”

“Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but neither one of us is gonna be leading your little demon army.”

“Not yet,” she says, unfazed.

She vanishes.

Dean swears. He doesn’t know what trick Ruby’s pulled that Sam trusts her so implicitly, but Dean won’t let himself be snowed over. He closes his eyes. Hands stuffed in the jacket pockets, ignoring the rain. There’s definitely something here, a foul bite to the air in this town that clings to the back of his throat. It’s not strong enough or specific enough for him to track. He sighs; shakes his head to clear it and flexes his fingers inside the pockets.

His thumb brushes against something tucked inside the inner jacket pocket, and Dean feels a static shock the second he touches it. He hunches down against the rain and unzips the jacket, reaching inside to pull out a hex bag.

Dean takes a deep breath. Then another. He pats down John’s pockets until he can find a lighter and then a dry enough spot to burn the fucker. He ends up tucked under the overhang at the back of the store, hunched over to shield the flame from the wind.

If the bag was for him, then he would’ve felt the effects by now, assuming the demon juju he’s got doesn’t protect him from that sort of thing. He doesn’t think it does. But it was in John’s coat, and if it was keyed to him, back in the motel room...

John could be dead already.

Dean watches the hex bag crackle and pop in the flames, willing it to burn faster with every breath.

 

*

 

Dean double-times it back to the motel, hands fumbling the key in the lock before he can get the door open. The room is empty, but the bathroom light is on and the door open.

“John?!”

There’s a faint rasp from the bathroom. Dean finds him crumpled down in front of the sink, hands over his face.

“Shit, you okay?”

John scrubs his hands over his face, smearing bright flecks of blood down his jaw. He nods.

“What - ” John stops to clear his throat, “what was it?”

“Hex bag.” He pats at his pocket, still wearing the jacket. “I burned it as soon as I found it. Fucking witches, man.”

John’s head falls back against the wall behind him. Dean shifts on his feet, not sure what he’s supposed to do right now. What he wants to do is grab John and check with his own two hands that he really is fine, but he’s equally sure that would go over like a lead balloon. Dean’s only seen John get his ass kicked bad a couple of times, and every time he was a prickly asshole about it for days after.

But when John reaches one hand up Dean grabs it without thinking, and together they lever John up off the floor. He’s unsteady but his color is good, couldn’t have hacked up too much of insides, Dean figures. Dean absently squeezes one shoulder, glad of the warmth and solidness of it. John glances down at his jacket.

“Where’d you go?”

“Just out stretching my legs, you know,” Dean says.

Dean meets his eyes. He’s known John long enough to tell that John doesn’t believe him. Dean doesn’t have an explanation that wouldn’t just piss John off more, and he’s really not in the mood for a fight. John is here and alive and he doesn't need to know anything about Ruby or her warning. 

Dean leans in without thinking and presses his lips against John’s mouth.

John tastes like blood - tangy copper and a little bit sour, and Dean doesn’t care because he’s still here, still breathing, warm and alive. John responds automatically, sending a thrill of satisfaction tingling up Dean’s spine. No fighting, no hesitation. No twenty minute debate about how they shouldn’t, why they shouldn’t.

They’re chest to chest, pressed together with each breath and Dean can still smell the smoke from the hex bag burning, the bitter scent still clinging. He skates his hands up John’s sides, over the worn-soft fabric of his shirt, and John reaches up and tugs him in closer by the collar of his jacket.

John is the first to break away. “We need to check the room.”

“Hmm?”

“Dean, focus. They hid one on me, we need to check your stuff over. Check the room, the car.”

Dean swears. Of course they do, it’s a rookie fucking mistake not to do that first. He runs his hand up and over John’s chest, palm resting right over his heart, savoring the freedom to touch - that John’s allowing so much of it, right now.

After a second he nods and steps back, patting himself down first. Checking his pockets, the lining of the jacket. When that’s clear they both head out into the room, tearing apart both of their packs, stripping the beds, checking their weapons bag and the med kit. They check the car too - inside the wheel wells, glove compartment, under the seats. Everything.

“I think we’re okay,” Dean says, re-rolling his clothes around the EMF reader and tossing it back in his bag.

John’s still scanning around the room, but after a moment he nods absently.

“It’s gotta be one of the women we talked to today that made us, right?”

“Probably,” John says. “My bet is on a coven, all four of them.”

“Well, three now.” 

Amanda Burns had died bloody last night. Ruby’s warning comes back to him, full force.

“And they aren’t your typical New Age charm bracelet kind of witches,” Dean says, “this is old school black magic. You ever see a regular coven packing this much power?”

“Not in a long time.”

 _Yeah, because there’s a demon in town backing them up, although fuck knows why._ Dean wants to blurt it out, but it’s not like he can just say that without explaining how he knows.

Dean reaches down to grab the bedding off the floor, turning away and trying to sound casual.

“Okay, so maybe there’s something else going on here. Black magic users don’t worship the moon or the Earth Goddess or whatever, they worship demons. And seems like there’s demons in every town these days. What if one of them decided to answer a few prayers, quid pro quo style?”

“You feeling an itch?” John says.

Dean swallows. It’s as close as they’ve ever come to talking about Dean’s… whatever it is. The spidey sense that’s saved their asses a couple of times now since the gate opened. He nods without turning around.

“Good. Then we know what to look for.”

Dean whips around.

“Good? That is the farthest thing from good. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your life is on a reverse-fucking-mortgage right now and they just made a play to cash you out early. You, specifically. Not me. They didn’t come after us because we’re hunters, otherwise they would’ve hexed us both. You get it?”

“They’re killing people in this town, Dean, it’s not just me they’re after. We came here to do a job.”

“You can’t do the job if you’re dead.”

John walks up to him, close enough that Dean has to tip his head back to make up for the half-inch of height John’s still got on him.

“I’m not dead yet.”

Dean closes his eyes. Yet, he thinks. John’s hands settle on his hips, pulling him in.

“Fuck me,” Dean says.

“Dean - ”

Less than five months, now. Not that John’s told him in so many words. They’ve both got the countdown hanging over their heads, together and separate. Unless Sam can pull a miracle out of his ass, they’ve got five months left.

Dean wants to feel every minute of it.

 _"Fuck me_ , please just - _”_

John grinds their hips together, catching Dean’s mouth in a searing kiss and reaching up to yank the jacket off Dean’s shoulders. Dean shrugs out of it, out of his shirts, toeing out of his shoes all while trying his best to keep his hands on John’s body, his lips on John’s.

Dean drops to his knees, mouths at John’s dick through the denim. John’s got his hands buried in Dean’s hair, if Dean looks up he can see John’s head tipped back as he groans.

There isn’t much finesse in the way Dean fumbles open John’s pants, pushes his boxers down just far enough to let his cock spring free. It’s dark with blood, half-hard already and still just slightly damp from the shower. Dean curls one hand around the base to hold it steady and flattens his tongue against the underside, licking up and around the tip.

John’s hands clench in his hair, just this side of painful. Dean wants that. Just like that, wants to wake up feeling it on every inch of his body like a brand.

He sucks John’s cock into his mouth, as much as he can and then a little bit farther, nose buried against the dark hair right at the base, his hand sliding down to cup John’s sac. His other hand is pressed up against his own crotch, wanting desperately to pop open his jeans but not willing to split his focus long enough to get it done.

John is tugging on his hair, pulling him back. Up.

“C’mon… Dean - ”

Dean backs off, looking up to find John looking down at him, breathing hard. Dean wipes the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping away the spit and precum that’s leaked out over his jaw. John’s eyes track every movement, hungry.

John tugs him up, kisses him deep and together they manage to fumble open Dean’s pants and tug them down far enough that Dean can kick them off. John’s hands slide down his back, squeezing his ass. Dean bites at John’s jaw to slow him down, liking the sting of John’s stubble as it scratches over his lips.

“Lube?”

John doesn’t seem to hear him, just _hmms_ and starts walking Dean over to the nearest bed. The beds are still stripped, and most of their stuff is scattered across the floor from earlier. Dean plants his feet and leans forward into John, forcing him to a stop. John’s hand sneaks farther down, the pad of his thumb rubbing over Dean’s hole. Dean’s breath hitches and he disentangles himself just far enough to scan around the floor until he finds what he’s looking for - a packet of lube half hidden under their med kit bag. He grabs it and rips it open with his teeth, turning to spit out the chemical taste.

“Hey, your hand,” he says.

John pulls Dean back in with one arm, their cocks pressed close together between their stomachs, just slightly tacky with Dean’s spit and their combined precum. There’s barely enough room between them for Dean to reach up and squeeze out the packet onto John’s other hand, half of it ending up smeared down their chests.

John slides his fingers in without much preamble, and Dean - it’s been a while, for him. It feels strange and intense and uncomfortable and good at the same time. It’s nothing new, not for Dean, but what’s different now is knowing those hands, knowing the body against him so well he could pick it out blind. He bears down on the fingers, taking them in as far as they’ll go, clenching when John moves to pull out.

John is shushing him, muttering throw-away words neither of them cares enough to hear. All Dean can hear is their breathing, rough and unsteady.

“Do it, do it goddamit - _please_.”

Dean’s got his face tucked into the curve of John’s neck, mouthing over the pulse point, stopping only to beg. John pulls his fingers out, moves to grip his hips instead.

“I will, shhh. Dean, c’mon.”

John must’ve remembered at some point about the beds, because instead he starts pulling Dean back over to the table, covered in their case notes, empty beers, and supermarket rag newspapers about alien babies and gators living in the sewers. Dean turns around and braces himself against the table, his hands crumpling the paper.

John’s got one hand on his lower back and the other on his ass, fingers teasing inside and pulling out to run his thumb over the rim. Dean shivers; both at the feel of it and the cold of the room seeping in now that he’s not pressed up against John's heat, head to toe.

John slaps his hip lightly. “Back up and spread a bit.”

His cock stiffens at the words, and Dean lets his head fall forward and groans. He walks back a step, spreading out his legs and glad for the moment that he’s facing the table. He’s not used to this. He’s used to quick and done, clothes still on, pants down just far enough to do business. Not standing around spread and naked, lights on, John standing behind him looking his fill.

There’s a pause that must’ve been John squeezing out the rest of the lube onto his cock, because the next thing Dean feels is smooth, blunt pressure easing inside him. Dean starts panting, goes down to his elbows on the table and pushes back to meet John’s thrust. He’s still shivering, shaking a little but John’s got one lube-slicked hand clamped down on his shoulder and it keeps him grounded.

He doesn’t get much time to adjust before John is fucking him, setting up a steady, smooth rhythm that leaves Dean biting his lips shut not to whimper. He wants this, wants it to ache so he feels it the next day. Wants to imprint the feeling so that he’ll remember it five months from now.

Six months from now.

John reaches around to tug at Dean’s cock, mostly limp now, but that’s not what he wants - needs - to feel. Instead he pulls the hand up around to suck the fingers into his mouth, running his tongue over each knuckle, pressing between his fingers in time with John’s thrusts.

Dean feels it inside when John comes. His body stills, pressed inside right to the base and he presses Dean down, chest to the table. Dean turns his head to the side and clenches his lower body, drawing a moan out of John’s throat, pumping his hips gracelessly back against John.

Dean slows, hips stuttering. John is leaning over his back, the fingers of one hand still tucked inside Dean’s mouth. He pulls them out slowly, his other hand braced against Dean’s back, and reaches down to jack him off.

His dick is limp between his legs. He pulls himself up enough to rest his forehead on the crook on his arm, practically laying on the table. John’s hand is calloused and firm, not quite enough lube and spit left on his palm to make it comfortable. But even so, it doesn’t take long for Dean to come, smearing over his belly and John’s hand. John keeps pumping him through the aftershocks until it’s too much.

“Nn,” Dean mumbles and twists his hips away. The movement allows John’s cock to slip out of him, and there’s a heady confused feeling of pride and shame at the trickle of come that slips out after.

They stay like that for a long moment, catching their breath.

John reaches down, palming Dean’s ass. “Okay?” he asks, like he’s going to go take a good long fucking look.

Dean pulls away, glad his face is still hidden, tucked up against his arm on the table.

“M’fine.”

“We should - ”

“Hmm?”

John clears his throat, hands still on Dean’s skin - one thumb tracing up the base of his spine. “We need to go check out the coven. Stop them before they do any more damage.”

Dean nods and pushes himself up slowly. His body aches, from his shoulders right on down to his legs.

“I got it. Lemme just,” Dean waves vaguely towards the bathroom. He grabs the first set of clothes he can find off the floor and ducks into the bathroom.

He’s not hiding.

 

*

 

What they find at Tammi Benton’s apartment is a bloodbath. The front door is closed but not locked, the living room tossed to hell, and three women are dead on the floor. There’s traces of sulfur everywhere.

John and Dean sweep the rest of the house, rocksalt-loaded shotguns at the ready for all the good they’ll do against a demon. But the rest of the house is empty and quiet.

Dean feels a familiar tickle at his senses and leaves John looking over the carnage in the living room.

“I’m gonna go check out the backyard, see if I can find anything.”

John barely glances up.

Dean waits until he’s out of sight, tucks his gun away and slips out the back. Ruby is waiting in the shadows for him.

“What the hell is this?”

“This?” She snorts. “This is what happens when you’re too busy boning Papa Bear to do your damn job. I have to go in and clean up after you, and things get a little messy.”

She steps forward into the weak light and Dean can make out the blood drying on her face and staining the front of her shirt. He doesn’t feel sorry for her.

“And the demon?”

“Dead. And you’re welcome, by the way.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, I’m not thanking you. No one asked for your help. I’m not even sure why you’re trying to help in the first place.”

“I’ve told you why. I’m different. I don’t know how, and things would be a hell of a lot easier if I weren’t. But I still remember what it was like… being human.”

Dean stops.

“You didn’t know? That’s what happens when you go to hell, Dean. There’s a real fire in the pit, among other things. And human souls burn until there’s nothing left but smoke, until they don't remember _being_ human anymore. That’s what hell is.”

 

*

 

 _June 2008_  
_(Present)_

 

They stand at the end of the path, just before it dips low enough to be overtaken by the crashing waves. They’d been hoping the path would cut along the edges of the sea, that they could just follow it around, but it ends here. No other way ahead but through. Sam ties a length of rope around his waist and offers the other end to Dean.

Dean takes it but hesitates. “Where the hell did you even get this? I mean, the knives I get, I don’t like it but I get it. But seriously, you got like a ham sandwich and a cold beer stashed away somewhere too?”

Sam actually grins.

“No sandwiches, sorry. It’s - ” he stops. “It’s a physical manifestation of a bond. Our connection, I mean. To each other,” Sam adds, like it wasn’t awkward enough already.

“Uh.”

“Yeah, I was kind of hoping you weren’t gonna ask.”

“No it’s cool. Weird as hell, but,” Dean gestures around them. No weirder than anything else, a rope-thing that represented… whatever the hell it was that he and Sam were to each other. Family wasn’t exactly right, but comrades-in-arms sounded a little cliche, and Dean had strong feelings about cliches.

“Hey, isn’t this from the trunk?” Dean asks. It’s paracord, the kind regular hunters and crazy backwoods survivalists liked to stash away everywhere they could think to put it. The kind John always carried in his go-bag.

Sam nods. “From the Impala. Dad always made sure we had some around, I don’t know why.”

Dean checks his knots, reaches over to tug at Sam’s too, because a _rope’s only as good as what’s at the other end of it_ , he hears in John’s voice. Sam is scanning the distance, looking for a clear path through the seething mass of bodies in the water.

“There,” he says, pointing. There’s a break in the cliffs surrounding the ocean, and it’s impossible to tell from this distance whether there’s an actual shoreline for them to land on, and there’s no way for them to know until they get there.

The water is ice cold and foul-slick. Dean can feel bodies moving against him, knocking into his legs, his ribs, his back. Hands scrabble at his clothes. He kicks out, hard, buying himself enough space to push forward, following in Sam’s wake.

The souls are ragged, starved, and aged beyond the telling of it. What they lack in strength they make up for in desperation. Dean’s efforts to keep his head above the water lasts about three seconds into the tumult, and then he’s taking desperate breaths whenever he can fight his way to the surface long enough to open his mouth and suck in air. He can’t tell how Sam is faring ahead of him, except that it can’t be much better. There’s still slack in the rope line so he can’t be too far ahead. Every once in a while Dean catches a glimpse of a sleeve or familiar wet mop of hair through the writhing mass.

“Sam!” He yells out, fighting to keep his head above the surface. He tugs on the rope, trying to get a beat on which direction to look.

He can’t see Sam, but he just barely hears him over the din.

“Dean! This isn’t working!”

“I know!” Dean goes under for a long minute that shoves his way back up. “What do we do?”

Just then he takes an elbow hard to the gut and something rock solid hits the base of his neck. And yeah maybe he doesn’t physically have a body but try telling him that now because that fucking _hurt_. He curls over and then goes limp, like a puppet with the strings cut. He can feel himself being tossed back and forth, slamming into the bodies around him, helpless to fight back.

Then there’s a vice around his middle, clamping down so hard he snaps back to attention, convinced he’s about to be broken in half.

It’s Sam. Pulling him up with one arm around his stomach, the other frantically yanking them up over the bodies around them. Dean sucks in a few desperate gulps of air.

“- an idea. You’re not gonna like it,” Sam is saying.

“I like anything that gets us the fuck out of here. I always hated free swim.”

It’s a little easier now, the two of them close enough to work together to stay afloat. They still don’t really have any control over where they’re going; pushed and pulled by the masses of souls around them.

“Dean.”

“What?”

Sam just looks at him.

“What seriously? They’re just souls, not demons. We don’t even know if - ”

“They’re souls in hell. If they’re not demons yet, then they’re going to be. I was able to pull mojo on the girl up up above. Your push/pull thing should work too. It’s worth a shot.”

“Worth a shot, right,” Dean mutters to himself.

Dean takes as deep of a breath as he can manage and tries to block out the noise and the chaos. He grabs onto Sam’s shoulders, wading with his legs, trusting him to keep them afloat and also partly because he still doesn’t know how exactly this thing of his works and if he pushes Sam away by accident they’re both gonna pay for it.

He feels the energy pooling in his gut, the same lightning rod electric feeling that sometimes makes his fingertips burn or his head pound. It flows through him like an electrified pulse of blood, and he gathers it up and pushes it out.

For a split second, everything is silent.

A shock of power rips through the water, and then a wave of sound crashes down on them as all the bodies nearby are flung outwards away from him, the souls crushed against each other, their bodies crumpling, blood and bone bursting out into the water as tender skin splits open like loose seams under pressure.

Dean chokes on it, sucking in air that doesn’t seem to fill his lungs no matter how hard he tries. He and Sam are wading in a twenty-foot wide circle of open water.

“That’ll do it. C’mon.”

Sam slaps a hand on Dean’s back and starts making his way forward, but Dean is still stuck in place.

“Dean, come on. We don’t know how long this is gonna last.”

Dean follows absently, eyes fixed on the carnage. He did that. He didn’t have much of a choice. But a rabid dog doesn’t have much of a choice either, does it?

 

*

 

They make slow progress across the sea, stopping when they have to so Dean can make some space. He tries to reel it back after the first time, use just enough power to move but not crush them. The results aren’t quite as grisly but they aren’t exactly pretty either. The sea is already packed full of souls, there just isn’t room to move them away, not without grinding body against body, smashing souls together until they start to pop like grapes.

Sam keeps up a steady litany of arguments against Dean's objections. “They’re in hell anyway, you really think this makes that much of a difference?”

Yeah, like if someone’s house is on fire you shouldn’t feel too bad about adding a little gasoline and roasting marshmallows. Might as well, right? He doesn’t say it out loud, mostly because he doesn’t have enough breath to argue right now, and even if he did arguing isn’t going to get them anywhere. They need to get to get to the far shore, and this is the only way they’re gonna get there.

And somewhere on the other side of this sea, John is waiting for them.

 

*

 

Finally they make it, stumbling-crawling-clawing their way onto the far shore with stiff limbs and bruised bodies.

They stop to catch their breath; hands on knees and trying to shake off the slurry of viscera and slime from the sea. They’re out of the worst of the storm by now, but no less miserable for it.

Dean looks back at the water. 

“We should lay down a marker,” he says.

Sam swallows down another gulp of air and nods, blinking hard to get the muck out of his eyes.

Dean picks out the knot in the paracord tying them together with clumsy frozen fingers, leaves the end dangling on the ground by Sam and stumbles over to the cliff face. He carves in the symbol, nicks a finger and traces it over in blood. It vanishes into the stone.

He heads back over to Sam, who’s looking down the shore at something in the distance. Something huge that's moving along the shore, far away. More than one something.

“Let me guess, we’re going that direction,” Dean says.

“You see any other direction to go?”

It could be sarcastic, but it’s not. Sam is honestly asking, because neither of them wants to see too closely whatever the hell it is that’s stalking along the far side of the shore.

And of course the answer is no. They’re on a thin strip of shoreline with looming cliffs on all sides. The only break in the cliffs is the same one they’d spied before, back on the path down from the gates. The way ahead leads them straight towards the shadowed figures.

“Fantastic. Any ideas?”

Sam doesn’t answer, and Dean is taking that as a ‘no’.

Wet, frozen, and drained, they move on.

 

*

 

As they get closer, they can see the figures more clearly. They move like animals, down on all fours, snapping out at the souls in the water, occasionally shaking their heads in the air, jaws bared with some hopeless soul clenched in their teeth.

Sam slows down, then stops.

“Cerberus,” he whispers.

“As in Fluffy the three headed dog?”

Sam nods.

“That’s not a three headed dog, Sam. That is - okay I don’t know what in the hell that is.”

Sam’s eyebrows lift up and he shrugs. “It’s got three heads. It’s also got three of everything else too.”

“Yeah, because _there are three of them_.”

But that part apparently isn’t what bothers Sam. “I thought it was supposed to guard the gates though, not inside the actual pit.”

“Well maybe it - they - are taking a little shore leave for some R and R. Does it matter? We’ve still gotta figure out a way to get past them.”

“I guess it doesn’t make sense anyway. Why would they guard the gates of hell, how many people would really be trying to break in?”

Dean winces and offers up an open palm. The two of them would, for starters.

Sam rolls his eyes. “Besides us, I mean. They aren’t guarding the gates, they’re guarding the pit. Keeping people in.”

“And?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.”

They’re crouched down by the cliff face, close enough to keep tabs on the hounds, but hopefully far enough away to go unnoticed.

“So you’re sure about that ham sandwich right?”

“What?”

“I’m just thinking a distraction might be a good idea right about now.”

“For you or for the dogs?”

“I’m not really all that picky which,” Dean answers, but even if he weren’t technically incorporeal there’s no way he’d be able to stomach food right now. His head is still pounding from before, and his throat feels scraped raw. He has no idea how much sludge he swallowed in the sea, but that shit can’t be healthy, physical body or no.

 

*

 

They stick close to the cliff, backs plastered against it and moving slowly sideways as silently as they can. They’re hoping to just slip on by the beasts guarding the path between the cliffs.

The only weapons they’ve got are the pigstickers they brought with them, which were only good for carving sigils and a little light metaphysical blood magic here and there. They’re not exactly equipped to take on a hellhound; nevermind three giant ones all at once. Dean takes the lead, his knife out in front of him like it’s a shield.

The hounds are busy snapping at the water, braying, and stalking the souls carried in on each fresh wave. They’re close enough now to see the scales on the tail of the closest hound, the streaks of blood on its claws. Dean makes a conscious effort not to stop breathing.

He can remember late nights - trying to sneak back into the motel room, shoes in one hand and the other closing the door millimeter by millimeter as he watched the rise and fall of John’s chest; checking for any sign that he’d woken up.

“Don’t hold your breath,” John had said one time, without even opening his eyes.

“Uh.” For a split second Dean had the wild hope that John was talking in his sleep. But then John sat up a bit, every line of his body broadcasting exhaustion.

“Don’t hold your breath when you’re trying to sneak around. Your body tenses up, makes you clumsy. Breathe quietly, but _keep breathing_.”

“Right. Thanks.”

Dean had stood in the doorway, bleary eyed with a few too many beers in him.

John had wiped a hand over his eyes. “Christ, kid.”

“Sorry?” Dean had tried.

“Do you have a curfew?”

Dean snorted. “No.”

“Then why the fuck do you think I care if you go out at night? I don’t give a shit, but if you’re gonna come in late then _come in late_. Don’t give me a heart attack trying to sneak back in.”

“Uh...”

“Go to bed.”

And with that John had rolled over and gone back to sleep, leaving Dean in the doorway still holding his shoes and wondering why the fuck he felt so guilty.

 

*

 

Dean almost falls over when he reaches out to grab the next patch of wall behind him and feels open air instead. They’ve made it to the break in the cliffs. He looks back at Sam, meets his eyes and nods. If their luck can hold for just a few more seconds they’ll be in the clear.

Dean shifts around the corner. Sam follows a second later, eyes fixed on the closest hound. Just as they both start to back up along the path away from the shore, there's a flicker of movement in the sand. A pair of eyes opening. It’s a soul half buried in the sand, piercing blue eyes sunken deep into its skull.

It screams. One bony hand straining out to reach towards them. All three beasts whip around, zeroed in on Sam and Dean.

Sam grabs his shoulder, stumbling back. “Run,” he says.

But the path behind them is wide and clear and in a footrace against hellhounds they don’t stand a chance. Instead Dean reaches out, pure instinct driving him with no clear plan. He pushes back the souls at the base of the shore, crushing them together until the pressure builds up into a towering wave.

Then he pulls.

A flood of souls comes crashing down onto the shore, over the heads of two of the closer hounds, buries them in the avalanche of bodies. The third hound whips around to snap at the flood of bodies burying his two brothers.

When Dean lets go of the pull it’s like a cord snapping, the full blast of it slamming right back into his head. He hears Sam calling his name, and then everything goes black.

 

*

 

Dean wakes up on the ground, head propped up on what must be Sam’s jacket. _Sam’s metaphorical jacket_ , he thinks, and it makes his head pound harder.

“Wha’ happ’ned?”

He can’t see Sam, but he knows he must be somewhere nearby. He’s assuming if he’s still alive then somehow Sam must’ve pulled some miracle out of his ass to get them both to safety. Or at least, as safe as they could possibly be down here.

“You pulled some epic Obi Wan Kenobi-level shit and then passed out.”

“Yeah I figured that much. And?”

“And I dragged your ass out of there and waited for you to wake up.”

Dean sits up slowly, mindful of the pounding in his head that’s only getting worse. Sam is standing a little ways off, looking pissed.

“Oh come on, you really think we could’ve outrun that shit?”

“I can’t do this on my own, Dean.”

“Yeah, case in point right here.” Dean gestures at himself and then waves back up the path, presumably in the direction they came from.

“No, I mean I can’t do this if you just pull shit like that and get yourself killed or something! Dad already died to keep me breathing. I don’t need you following him down.”

“Okay, first of all, that back there was just as much to save my own ass as it was to save you. Second, we’re in hell, Sam. I’m not gonna promise you that I’m not gonna do anything dangerous down here. You can’t make that promise either, so don’t act like you can.

“Besides, what happened to ‘oh I don’t think we can die down here anyway, so everything’s peachy?’”

Sam doesn’t say anything for what feels like a full minute. “You’re right. I don’t think we can die down here. But I’m starting to think what could happen might be worse than that.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Dean hangs his head, braced between his hands. Then he looks up. “Are we good?”

Sam watches him for a beat before answering. “We’re good.”

“Hey, why didn’t I snap back topside while I was out?”

Sam looks a little cagey at that, glancing down at Dean’s arm. The paracord is looped in a sloppy slip knot around his wrist, the other end is tied to Sam’s wrist. Sam pulls it off his arm and looks a little abashed.

“Uh, sorry. It was the only thing I could think of. Didn’t want to waste a trip if I could help it.”

Dean just nods.

They take a little time to recover, stretching out sore _(not real, not real)_  muscles and waiting for Dean’s head to stop pulsing. Sam places a marker on another patch of wall, another breadcrumb to find their way back and suddenly it hits Dean.

They’re going to have to find their way back.

Every single thing they’ve made it past, they’re going to have to do it all over again on the way out. He’s never really been optimistic enough to believe they would actually be able to do this, he’d mostly gone along with it because it wasn’t like they had any better options. Now the weight of it presses down on him, the enormity of what they’re attempting and just how unlikely it is that they’ll really make it out of here. It’s real to him now in a way that it wasn’t - couldn’t have been - before.

 

*

 

When Dean takes a moment to look around he realizes why Sam didn’t pull him any farther on. Just a few yards away from where they’re camped out, the ground rolls down at a steep angle. It’s doable, but not if you’re lugging six feet of dead weight with you, even if you are Sam fucking Winchester and your body is currently a psychological construct.

Sam peers down the slope with him. “Greed.”

There are dots along the slope, more than he can count. More souls, has to be. “I say we grab one, you do your freak thing and we get some answers.”

“That almost sounds like a plan.”

“Almost?”

Sam just grins.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This kind of just kept growing on me, it was literally meant to be half as long. Yikes.
> 
> I kind of imagined the Styx to be like the Grand Canyon but on a massive scale. So after eons of currents running over the shore, it's worn the shore down into this huge canyon, forcing Charon to abandon her original dock and climb down the cliff face to the actual shoreline miles below.
> 
> The world flipping over when the boys go from Charon's boat to the underworld is vaguely inspired by the boat flip in the 3rd PotC movie. I've only seen the moving once years ago, and I was a wee bit delirious at the time. It seemed like a cool concept, and literally the only reason I haven't re-watched the movie since is because I don't want to be disappointed if I find out that was all just the delirium talking.


	3. Chapter 3

* 

 

_January 2008_

He's well into his third beer by the time Sam shows up, late and looking exhausted, but thankfully alone.

"So?"

"So, it's gonna take some time, Dean. We're trying to translate fifty pages of early Latin demon-legalese full of caveat emptor and inter-locking exclusionary clauses - "

"And what, your little black-eyed helper isn't being so helpful after all?" Dean can tell he's struck a nerve. He cocks a brow in question and Sam purses his lips.

"She's helping where she can.” Sam hesitates for a moment, like he’s debating whether or not to continue. “Look, I’m not giving up. It’s just… Ruby doesn't think the contract can be broken."

"Okay, and how is that helpful?"

"She says the contract is air-tight. He dies, his soul goes downstairs. She thinks the only way to save him is to go after the demon who owns the contract."

“So then let’s go find the bastard.”

“We’ve been working on it. But whoever that is, they covered their tracks.”

Dean sits back, picking at the label on his beer. John is back at the room, crashing hard after three days in a running battle with a nasty pack of vampires. Dean isn't doing much better - it's been all he can do these past few months just to keep up with the man. They haven't stayed in the same town for more than two days in the last three weeks, racing from one hunt to the next.

"I said I'm not giving up, Dean. I just need more time to find another option."

"Yeah, well, we've got four months left. And that's only if I can keep him from succeeding in his kamikaze act until then." Dean shakes his head. "You haven't seen him lately, Sam. It's worse than Yellow Eyes. Worse than when you went missing."

Dean finishes his beer and heads out, leaving Sam sitting in the bar.

The walk back to the motel is brisk and Dean's grateful for it, the cold night air keeping him from wandering too deep into his thoughts. He slips back inside as quietly as he can, closing the door with clumsy-stiff hands and toeing out of his shoes.

John is sprawled out on the bed nearest the door, on top of the covers with his clothes still on. Even in the dim light Dean can tell he needs a shower and a shave. A change of clothes should probably be somewhere in the picture as well. 

“Don’t hold your breath,” John says and Dean freezes. John sits up and levels Dean with a look.

“Don’t hold your breath when you’re trying to sneak around. Your body tenses up, makes you clumsy. Breathe quietly, but keep breathing.” 

Dean can't figure how the man is even conscious right now, let alone offering up criticism. John blinks slowly, bringing the image of Sam's equally bloodshot eyes to mind. Dean wonders how many times Sam has matched them in the past eight months, sleepless night for sleepless night. It belatedly occurrs to Dean that John is still watching him. 

“Right. Thanks,” Dean says. 

John turns away, running a hand over his face like he can wipe away the split lip and three-day stubble. “Christ, kid.” 

“Sorry.” He's not even sure what for - waking John up, or sneaking out to meet up with Sam behind his back.

“Do you have a curfew?”

Dean snorts. “No.”

“Then why the fuck do you think I care if you go out at night? I don’t give a shit, but if you’re gonna come in late then _come in late_. Don’t give me a heart attack trying to sneak back in.” 

“Uh - ”

“Go to bed.” John rolls over and is back to snoring again almost immediately.

Dean shifts from one foot to the other, desperate to get some sleep but the near-quiet of the room is unbearable. He half wishes he'd stayed at the bar with the steady rumble of the old jukebox and the murmur of strangers’ conversations for company.

Four months.

Four months left, and they’ve still got nothing. Dean drops his shoes and crawls into the other bed, not sure he can stand to be any closer than that, not right now. Every rise and fall of John's chest is painful to watch. He closes his eyes but despite his exhaustion, sleep is a long time coming.

 

*

 

_Present_

There’s a deep grinding shudder that grows louder the lower they descend. Not as earsplitting-loud as the storm above, but at just the right pitch to set Dean's teeth on edge.

The dots they’d seen from the top of the slope are actually giant… boulders, for the lack of a better word.  To Dean, each one looks like someone took a load of wet concrete and rolled it around in a trash dump until it was roughly the size of a VW Bug.  Masses of take-out containers, keys, jewelry, dirty socks, anything and everything imaginable. Behind each boulder is a ragged soul, straining upwards.

The unfortunate souls that stop pressing upwards - even just for the briefest of moments to catch their breath - are immediately crushed by their burdens, rolling slowly at first and then gradually picking up speed as they tumble downwards.

The first soul they come to isn’t recognizable as any particular gender or age, just a frail body in tattered clothes, eyes focused on nothing but the weight in front of them. They don't look up when Sam and Dean approach.

"Hey," Sam says. “We’re looking for someone. If you help us, we can help you.”

Sam traces the symbol onto the boulder, but the soul doesn’t even seem to see it. They just keep pushing, heaving against the weight.

“ _Tell us who uses this symbol_ ,” Sam tries again, to no visible effect.

“Seriously? Put some feeling into it,” Dean says. Sam rolls his eyes, then tips his chin towards the boulder and raises one eyebrow.

Dean gives the soul a quick glance and figures why not. They both maneuver around to get their hands braced against it and push hard, lifting the weight just far enough up the slope that the soul bearing it freezes in place, hands uplifted but hovering just shy of touching.

_“Tell us who uses this symbol_ ,” Sam says.

“D- d- ” The soul stares at their hands like they can’t believe what they’re seeing, reaching out just slightly to brush their fingertips along the surface. Almost like they can’t fathom being able to touch the it without feeling the crushing weight of it bearing down. “Don’t. _Please._ ”

“Don’t what?”

Sam leans in, towering over the hunched body. His eyes are dark, and when he speaks Dean can feel the shiver of power coursing in the air.

“You know the source of this symbol. _Tell us where to find it.”_

The soul crumples to the ground between them, mumbling and muttering, hands curled in front of their face. Dean leans in close, but only manages to catch every other word. What he does hear is a jumbled mess - Dean catches something about a tower.

“That’s super helpful, buddy, thanks,” Dean says. “Now what?”

“I don’t know. We try another one?”

Dean’s hands are still braced against the boulder, but he turns just enough to peer down the slope, at the countless souls below.

“Maybe,” he says, doubtful. “What about this one?”

Dean turns back to look at Sam. A deal is a deal, right?

Sam nods. They both shift on their feet for better purchase and count to three, heaving the weight off to one side and leaving the soul to walk free.

An inhuman shriek splits the air.

The soul dives after the weight, pelting down the slope after it with their hands scrambling to reach the boulder as tumbles faster and faster. Sam and Dean stand, watching in horror as the miserable pair careen downwards past other souls until they pass out of sight.

 

*

 

Further down the slope is more and more packed with souls, each with their own burden.

Each nearly crushed under it, fighting to gain every spare inch of ground upwards. Some ignore Sam and Dean’s presence entirely, but a few freak out if Sam and Dean come too close, bracing their backs against the weight and scrambling with claw-like hands to fend them off.

Sam tries his psychic thing again and again, but they might as well be talking to the boulders, for all the good it does them. Most of them won’t talk at all, too exhausted to form words between one breath and the next. Sam doesn’t suggest trying to help again, and neither does Dean.

Eventually the slope is so tightly packed they have no choice but to squeeze between the boulders sideways.

Hands reach out between the cracks to shove and scratch, forcing them along from one small pocket of relative safety to the next. Dean elbows back when he can, twisting his body and plastering himself up against the rocks to escape the worst of the attack when he can’t. Not for the first time he wishes for a weapon - something, anything other than the tiny, useless blade he’s got on him.

Dean stops.

“This isn’t gonna work,” he calls out to Sam, who's ahead by a couple of steps.

“I know.”

Dean looks around him, the tight square-foot of room he has to move in, towering weights on all sides, marching ever so slowly in the opposite direction. It’s like being caught in the middle of an achingly slow avalanche-in-reverse.

He glances at the open air above their heads and winces, then looks back at Sam.

“I don’t think there’s any other way to get to keep going,” Sam says. “It’s either this, or we blast a hole through them.”

Dean shudders at the memory of getting through the sea up above. “Right.”

He braces with one foot against the rock to his right and his back and hands against the left and scoots himself upwards until he can roll onto the top of the boulder just below him on the slope.

There’s a baleful cry from underneath that he tries his best to ignore - the soul below objecting to the increased weight of their load. Sam is up too, a few feet away and peering out over the mottled landscape.

Dean takes a moment to stretch out his arms, relishing the feel of open space and free air that he’d desperately missed down below. He thinks about the first soul’s jumbled words.  “I don’t see a tower anywhere, do you?”

“He also said something about five into one, I think,” Sam replies. “It’s gotta mean something.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that, because sure it might mean something; but it also might just be the crazy-ass ramblings of a broken soul.

Dean likes numbers - EMF readings and counting cards and matching up the dates on a case, plunking them into order to make sense out of the chaos. Math was the subject that didn’t change when your school did; he could be halfway through _Where the Red Fern Grows_ one week and then three chapters behind on _The Giver_ the next at a new school - but long division was long division no matter how many times you transferred schools.

Numbers didn't lie.

Biblical numerology had never really been his thing, though. He knew the basics - nine circles of hell, twelve apostles, forty years in the desert, yadda yadda yadda. But, five?

Dean kicks idly at the crap sticking out of the boulder beneath his feet, tries to think of anything, anything that might make sense. But the thing bugging him is - the Styx isn’t biblical, and neither was Charon. Dean had spent enough time pouring over hell mythology in the last year to know that much.

Every culture on earth has an afterlife mythology, and who the fuck knows how many fives there are, sprinkled around throughout thousands of years of human history. Wild hunts and parsley seeds, Valhalla and the Asphodel fields, Jahannam and Sheol, Lucifer himself trapped in a prison of ice, Charon ferrying souls across the abyss. And then it hits him - _the Styx_.

“It’s the rivers, Sam.” 

Sam whole face shifts in understanding. “As in Hades, Persephone, the five rivers of the underworld?”

“Best I’ve got.” 

“No, that makes sense. And the tower - that’s what the symbol is, it has to be - the five rivers come together in a swamp, with the tower in the middle.” Sam turns towards Dean, grinning wide. 

Dean doesn’t quite share his enthusiasm. 

“Awesome. I was just thinking I haven’t been soaked in hell-muck for at least a couple of hours now. We should definitely go find a swamp and wade around in it looking for a tower - ” Dean stops. “Hold up a sec. If all the rivers come together anyway, are you seriously telling me we could’ve just floated downstream on the Styx and skipped all of this other crap?” 

“I don’t think it works that way. It’s a journey of the soul, not a physical journey. There’s a reason Ruby couldn’t just draw us a map with an ‘X marks the spot.’ ” 

_Yeah, I’m sure she’s got plenty of reasons not to make it that easy,_ Dean thinks. But he’s long past having that argument, it’s not like it would do either of them any good to hash out that pile of issues all over again.

“So then how do we find this swamp?” Dean asks.

“Find some water and follow it downstream, I guess.”

They start moving.

Boulder to boulder, hands slipping and feet sinking into the softer spots; patches where the boulders are loose-packed fabric or paper, or folded stacks of bills that tear loose and flutter down to the ground below as they grab on for purchase.

Dean’s shoulders are aching, his back too, creeping down into his legs that stumble along like rubber stilts beneath him. His palms are scratched up and there’s the sting of sweat in his eyes, and no amount of wiping his sleeve across his face will make it stop.

Their progress is slow; cutting nearly straight across the slope on shifting, rolling, unsteady ground, while the souls below fight and strain for every half-inch of progress upwards.

Farther down the slope it’s utter chaos. There’s too much weight pressing backwards and too many souls fighting for ground. Entire boulders are lifted skyward by the pressure, thrust upwards only to slam back down again, sending everything in the vicinity reeling. They can’t see down to the souls that are are at the bottom of this pit, and Dean doesn’t particularly want to.

Sam stops ahead of him, head bent down with his hands braced on his knees. Dean fights his way over to the boulder next to his, crouches down to catch his breath. Even then he can't completely relax - the one he's on is still shifting ever so slowly upwards. If he cranes his neck and looks down he can just catch the the top of a balding head and a pair of gnarled hands pushing from below.

“I swear the second we finish this thing I’m taking every dollar I’ve got, changing it to quarters and checking myself into a motel room with magic fingers,” Dean says.

Sam huffs something that isn’t really a laugh. They’ll feel it when they get topside, Dean knows.  Every ache and pain has a way of sticking with him, physical body or not. Like his mind is filling in the details his body doesn't remember. The scars don’t stay; they’d figured that out pretty quickly. The nicks on their fingers from drawing the runes would ache like a healing cut, but the skin itself would be whole and unbroken when they came back to the surface.

“Well, shit,” Dean had said when they’d first made that particular discovery.

“What?”

“If you can still feel it topside - still have to heal from it...”

Dean hadn’t really needed to say anything more. It’s bad for them, sure, they’d been hoping to bounce back and forth between hell and earth like a pair of masochistic yo-yos and worry about the touchy-feely psychological damage later. Or never.

But if hell took a physical toll then they were in a race against time in more ways than one. It meant they couldn’t just pop back topside for a recharge if they got hurt. The physical damage may not be visible, but they would feel it all the same _._

It was also the first time Dean had thought about _after_. They’d focused so hard on finding a way to bust John out that he’d never really considered what came next.

It hadn’t mattered, before. John was in hell and he shouldn’t be and that was that. Simple. Except somewhere in this place, maybe right under Dean’s feet at this very moment, or in the massive sea they’d crossed on the way in - somewhere - John was down here.

He was one of the hopeless souls, fighting, scratching, too consumed in his own battles to find a way out. Maybe unrecognizable; barely human at all. John was _here_. Somewhere.

 

*

 

By some unspoken agreement they’re moving farther down the slope now. Cutting across the slope seems to go on forever, but there’s got to be _something_ at the bottom of it all.

Progress isn’t a matter of stepping from one slow-moving heap to the next anymore.

Every soul that loses their footing farther up the slope ends up tumbling back down towards them along with their burden, wreaking havoc as they crash into those below.  Sam is somewhere ahead of him, only visible in glimpses of a flannel sleeve or shaggy mop of hair.  Dean weaves and dodges, flinging himself from one temporary patch of safe ground to another.  

His foot sinks into a soft spot, and he twists and grabs at whatever he can to stop himself from sliding down below. His palms scrape along the surface, fingers locked into something hard covered in a filmy slime, he manages to yank his leg free just in time to roll out of the way of a body that lands next to him with a sickening _thud_.

He rolls back up to his hands and knees, looking up just in time to see Sam’s head to disappear underneath the boulders.

“Sam!”

Dean pushes off, scrambling towards where Sam went down just as a shock wave rolls through the crowd. Chaos still reigns on the slope at large, but in the maybe 30 foot space around them, all motion has stopped dead.

“ _Hold. Still._ ”

Dean feels the words more than hears them, coming from below just a few feet from where he’s crouched. Aware of the command hanging in the air but not bound by it, Dean steps carefully over to the next boulder, and cranes over the edge to look down.

Sam is there on his knees, his body wedged between two enormous boulders and a gash on his forehead streaming blood, his arms stretched out on either side and straining with the effort of holding everything and everyone around them locked in place.

“Dean,” he says, the name measured. Each breath sounds like it’s costing him. “Look. Down.”

Dean looks.

Water. There’s water below them, and Sam is nearly waist-deep in it. With the immediate area held in place, he can see that the slope doesn’t end, exactly - it just drops off in a steep ledge, murky water spilling out over the cliff. No wonder they hadn’t been able to see it from up above.

Far, far below he can see the water crashing into a swamp. It’s where they need to go, and there’s only one way to get there. The rock he’s standing on shifts just slightly, snaps him back to reality.  He lays flat and reaches an arm down to Sam, hoisting him back up out of immediate danger just as Sam’s hold starts to wear off and the boulders around them, grinding and straining, start to press downwards yet again.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

Sam nods, wipes his arm across his face, smearing the blood coming from his nose and forehead. “Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Dean isn’t so sure about that, but Sam is up and moving again before he can reply. Dean follows in his path, picking their way down to the edge. There’s no discussion, no stopping to consider the situation. Sam gets there first, and with nothing more than a quick look back to make sure Dean’s behind him - throws himself over the edge. Dean doesn’t stop to watch, keeps his eyes on his own two feet until he reached the edge himself.

Standing there, he gets Sam’s need to move on without hesitating. But his own feet feel rooted in place, watching the water crash down below him, and he knows without a doubt they’ll only feel more stuck in place the longer he waits.

So he doesn’t wait.

 

*

 

_February 2008  
_ _Freehold, New Jersey_

“ _Don’t chug it, you idiot, we’ve got enough problems without you giving yourself alcohol poisoning_ ,” John says but at the moment Dean can only process about every third word.

He spills most of it anyway, his hands numb and about as nimble as bricks, the flask cupped between them. He tries to respond but his mouth isn’t cooperating.

John throws a heavy blanket over him as soon as they make it back to the car. Dean can hazily remember being dragged out of the water, John thumping on his back way too hard while Dean had gasped for air. 

Dean tumbles into the car, doesn’t notice at first that John isn’t going around to get in the other side. Instead, he’s bent down somewhere out of sight and Dean’s feet suddenly feel even colder than he thought possible and then suddenly so hot they feel like they’re burning.

“Hngg,” is all he can manage in protest.

His legs are folded up into the car and oh, those are his boots John is chucking into the backseat. He realizes John is still talking.

“- christ’s sake Dean will you - ”

John pulls the blanket away and Dean is too numb-stupid to protest but _fuck_ that’s cold and why would John give him the blanket and take it away again. But then John is peeling him out of his shirts and wrenching Dean’s shoulder and elbow at a funny angle that he only feels in a kind of distant way.

John bullies him out of his jeans too, with a lot more cursing and Dean trying to help with uncoordinated limbs. At some point he thinks he catches John’s head with an elbow but can’t be sure. The jeans get chucked in the back with the shirt and the boots, landing with a wet plop and Dean thinks - _the leather,_ but his mouth still isn’t on board with talking. So he pulls the blanket back around him and tries to clamp down on his chattering teeth because it’s starting to make his head hurt.

Finally John leaves him the fuck alone and gets in the driver’s side, and Dean thinks longingly of the motel and the clanking of an old-school radiator and piles of starch-stiffened sheets.

But John doesn’t actually put the car into gear. He starts the engine and cranks up the air and if Dean was in any way capable of shooting him in the goddamn eyeball right then he would do it, because the engine just started like two seconds ago and the air coming out of the vents is the very opposite of warm.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” John is saying.

“- d-d - di,” he tries.

“We had a plan, Dean.”

Dean would shrug, but it turns into more of a full body twitch than anything else. John cranes over in the seat, rubbing one hand hard over Dean’s shoulders and arms. The car is just starting to heat up, and he isn’t shivering as hard now, but he’s still far from comfortable. 

“We had a _plan,_ ” John repeats like that will undo things. It was a shitty plan, Dean wants to explain, if his mouth would cooperate. There are things Dean can do now - things he can handle - that John can’t understand.

“T-thought I could - " 

“You couldn’t.”

“Did we - ” 

“Barely.” John grips his shoulder, gives it a hard shake that Dean can see happening but just barely feel. “You can’t pull shit like that.”

He’s got that the wrong way around, Dean thinks. They’ve got less than three months left together and there’s John trying to throw himself into the fire early, wanting to use himself as the bait for a stupid hunt. Dean had to go after it alone, because otherwise - he sure as shit wasn’t going to let some water spirit cut those three months short.

By the time they get back to the room, the shaking has mostly subsided but Dean almost wishes it hadn’t. As his nerve endings come back online and the cold fades, all he can feel is pain. His skin burns with it, muscles and joints that creak with each movement and when he tries to stumble out of the car he goes down hard on the pavement. John picks him up, pulls Dean’s arm over his shoulder and drags him inside. 

John chucks the keys on table on the way in the door and bypasses the bed completely, heading straight for the bathroom. Dean is unceremoniously dumped on the closed toilet seat while John puts the stopper in the tub and cranks on the faucet.

“Little old for bathtime,” Dean slurs.

“Stop talking.”

John stands up and flicks on the light in the tiny bathroom and looks over Dean, wrapped up in the field blanket. He crouches back down in front of Dean and pulls the edges of the blanket apart to look. Dean closes his eyes as another tremor runs through him.

“Your knee looks swollen. Can you feel it?”

Dean shakes his head.

John’s fingers skate along his calf up towards the knee, gentle but not gentle enough and Dean hisses in pain when John tries to straighten the leg. Dean is dimly aware of John swearing again under his breath.

“Toes,” John says, and it takes a while for the word to process. Dean wiggles his toes obediently but refuses to rotate his ankle around.

Moving his ankle means maybe moving his knee and he’d really rather not. He tries to explain it John but the words don’t come out quite right.

The bath is full by then, and they fumble together to get Dean into the tub, moving his leg as little as possible. Dean grits his teeth as he gets in the water - it’s burning hot, he curls into himself as much as he can, his breath coming out in short pants. John could’ve just set him down on the nice warm bed outside.  He glares up at John.

“It’s lukewarm,” John says. “Your body temp is still too low, give it a minute.”

Even as he says it, Dean can feel the burn of the water subsiding. Soon enough it feels almost comfortable, then actually just a little bit cold. John reaches down between Dean’s feet and pulls the stopper, turning on the tap again to get more hot water mixed in. Warmth travels up from Dean’s toes, his legs, his thighs. He groans when it hits his lower chest, finally able to take a deep, full breath without feeling like his lungs are brittle and too small.

John turns off the tap and replaces the stopper.

“Can you stay conscious?”

“Hmm?”

“Dean!”

“Yeah, yeah. ‘M fine.”

“I’ll be right back,” John says. He slaps at Dean’s face lightly. Dean makes a face and pulls away.  “Stay awake, you got it?”

Dean cracks one eye open. “Yessir.”

He lets his head loll against the tiles, idly examining the pink skin of his knees poking out of the water. The tub isn’t really meant for a full-grown adult to fit in comfortably. The water only comes up to his midsection, but that’s okay. The bathroom is warm enough from the steam of the hot water, Dean thinks John must have cranked up the thermostat in the room at some point.

John comes back with a plastic bag full of ice. He wraps it up in a mustard-yellow threadbare towel and meets Dean’s eyes as he eases it down onto Dean’s bum knee.

Dean grabs the makeshift ice pack. Much as he’d like to rip it away, he knows they’ve gotta keep the swelling down, though he’s not sure how exactly that works what with the near-hypothermia and all. Dean shakes his head. He can’t think clearly, not right now, but John can and he’s here.

(For now.) 

It’s what Dean had been thinking when he’d slipped out to handle the hunt alone - some kind of Scottish water spirit, like a kelpie but more of a pain in the ass to kill. Save John from himself, at least for a little while longer. And for Dean, prove to himself that he could go it alone, that the job would still be the job even without John at his back any longer.

Dean had gone out to the lake looking for a water horse that night and instead found a local cop sitting on the shore, staring out into the water like it would give him answers.

They’d talked about the case, mulled over the possibilities together - two high school kids gone missing in the past month, their livers found floating up on the shore days later. It was still dark out, and Dean hadn’t noticed the odd streak of mud in the cop’s hair until it was too late.

He’d miscalculated. The _each-uisge_ hadn’t come at him in the form of a horse.

John sits back on the closed toilet lid, elbows on his knees and hands scrubbing over his face.  He needs a shave, Dean thinks idly.

John lets him stay in the water until it starts to lose its warmth, then takes the ice pack and dumps it back in the sink, offering Dean a hand up and out of the tub. Dean has to balance on one leg, one arm wrapped around John’s shoulders and the other braced against the opposite wall while John leans down to pull out the stopper and then doesn’t hesitate before he’s pulling Dean’s boxers down off his legs and dropping them in the tub.

Dean almost immediately starts shivering again, even though he can see the steam in the bathroom mirror and knows the room must be warm. John scrubs the motel towel over him, quick and efficient. As soon as he’s done, Dean lunges for the door frame, trying his best to keep the weight off his bad leg. He makes it halfway to the bed before John catches up, bracing one hand under Dean’s shoulder to steady him while the other yanks down the sheets on the bed.

Dean tips over sideways and grunts at the impact, his leg jostling at the movement, blindly grabbing a pillow and tucking it under his knee to keep it propped up a bit. He can’t quite lever himself up to get at the covers way down at the bottom of the bed though, not without shifting his bum leg.

John either doesn’t notice his discomfort, or doesn’t care. His eyes skim over Dean’s body clinically, checking for other injuries. Dean knows he’s got a few other bruises and scratches from getting tossed around in the water, but nothing too serious he thinks.

Mostly it’s his knee that’s fucked - twisted or something from trying to kick away from the thing hauling him down under the surface. John goes over the knee again, running his hands carefully around the swelling without touching it directly, before pulling the sheets up and over him.

“Feels like I twisted it,” Dean says.

John nods. “Looks like it too. We’ll keep an eye on it. You hurt anywhere else?”

“Nah, I’m good.”

A muscle in John’s jaw twitches but instead of saying anything, he grabs one of Dean’s arms and rubs his hands over it, fast and hard, like he’s trying to work the warmth back into the muscles by force. Dean lets his eyes slip closed.

“We got it, right?  It’s dead?” He doesn’t open his eyes.

John hands slow for the barest second.  “Yeah, kid. We got it.”

“-‘kay.”

 

*

 

Dean is half asleep when he feels John slip into the bed behind him.

At some point John had maneuvered him onto his side, his good leg on the bottom, the bad leg kicked out in front of him and propped up on a pillow.

Dean’s fingertips are still tingling, he’s not sure if it’s left over from the cold or if it’s something else, but he’s too tired to care. His body aches and his eyes won’t stay open, he feels like he’s just run ten miles through soft-packed snow. He isn’t even surprised when he feels John settle behind him, one hand running over his bare hip, his thumb stroking over the dip in his spine just above his ass.

Dean can hear the catch of John’s breath behind him. He reaches back, nudges John’s hand lower, too drained to do much more than that.

John huffs a laugh, right behind his ear. “You don’t look up for it.”

“ - been worse and done more,” Dean mumbles back without thinking.

John’s hand stills.  “How much worse?”

“Does it matter?”

“Dean - ”

Dean is still exhausted, but wide awake now. “Why the hell should it matter, anyway?”

“Because I’m not doing that to you.” John pulls his hand away and Dean immediately misses the warmth of it. He can feel John shifting behind him, turning away. “You’re hurt, you should get some rest.”

Dean levers himself up on one elbow, craning his neck over one shoulder until he can just make out John’s profile in the dark.

“Fuck that. If you were like them, you would’ve had my ass that first night in return for buying me a hot meal. You didn’t. And if you think that this, now, is anything like that then you better get started, ‘cause I’ve got a lot of fucking food to pay for, don’t I?”

It surprises him how much it hurts, that John can’t see the difference between one thing and the other. That after five years hunting together John still thinks of him as that kid on his knees, too hungry and worn-down for John to feel like he was doing anything but taking advantage.

John has his eyes closed, and for a long moment Dean actually thinks he’s going to just feign sleep like a goddamn coward, but then his eyes crack open, looking right at Dean.

“It’s not about that. It’s - I got carried away last time. I don’t want to risk that happening again, not when you’re hurt.”

“It’s a freaking twisted knee, not like I’m dying of consumption, okay? Besides, I’m fucking freezing over here.”

He isn’t even lying about the last part - the bath and the warm room had helped a lot, but the plain fact is his core temp is still too low to be comfortable without an another heat source nearby. Dean grabs at John’s shirt and tugs him over.

“Get over here.”

Dean hadn’t been able to pull very hard from his vantage point, but John came anyway, rolling until he was settled right up against Dean’s back. John’s hand skims over his ribs.

“You’re cold.”

“A-plus there, detective.” Dean doesn’t roll his eyes, but only because he knows John wouldn’t see it anyway. “You gonna do something about it, or not?”

 

*

 

_Present_

Dean wakes up to hands slapping at his face and someone yelling. He coughs, disoriented and ducking away from hands that are too damn close. He needs air. He scrubs at his face, blinking rapidly as the room around him starts to come back into focus.

Sam is on the couch, elbows braced on his knees and his head in his hands. “God- _dammit,_ ” he grinds out and his voice sounds about as wrecked as Dean feels.

“Jesus _,_ boys,” Bobby says. He looks a little shell-shocked.

Dean grabs John’s flask out of his pack with clumsy hands and takes a healthy swig. ( _Don’t chug it, you idiot, we’ve got enough problems -_ )  It burns like a bitch going down but at least it counters the cold that feels like it’s taken up residence in his gut. He tips his head back against the legs of the couch and closes his eyes for a few seconds, waiting for the nausea to back down. When he feels like he can talk without ralphing he cracks his eyes open again and looks over at Sam.

“Think we should’ve used the rope, stayed tied together?” he asks.

Sam doesn’t look up, just shakes his head slowly. “I don’t think there’s anything we could’ve done. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Getting hit by a eighteen-wheeler made of solid ice. You?”

“About the same.” Sam swears under his breath, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Just wondering what we’re gonna wake up to, next trip.”

“Nothing good, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah well you both can just keep on wondering, ‘cause there ain’t gonna be another trip downstairs. I’m not helping you two kill yourselves trying to save a dead man. I never should’ve let you talk me into this.”

“Bobby - ” Sam tries. 

“Don’t you ‘Bobby’ me, boy! You didn’t see yourselves just then, you were both _drowning_ in the middle of my living room, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I’m not being part of this anymore. I’ll be damned if I let two good hunters die because you’re too damned stupid to know what’s good for you.

“You both know exactly what we’re up against. The gate opened a year ago and there ain’t enough hunters left to take on what’s out there now. And you want John back, and I get that, believe me I do. But there’s other things more important and you boys being dead isn’t gonna do anyone a lick of good.”

Bobby pulls his cap off and scrubs a hand over his head, his expression pinched. He shakes his head one more time and stalks out of the room.

Ruby is still there, looking over Sam with a critical eye. “And?”

“And - we’re getting closer, I think.” 

“How close is ‘closer’?”

“Close enough that we can’t stop now,” Dean answers.

He’s got that creepy-back of the neck tingle again and it makes him short tempered enough that he doesn’t feel much like doing a play-by-play for Sam’s little friend. Of course his spidey-sense is on high alert; she’s a demon, dammit. Some skills are only as useful as the company you keep.

Sam slips outside to go find Bobby, talk him into helping them continue. Dean takes another swig from the flask, and holds it on his tongue until he can feel it going tingly-numb, then swallows, lets the warmth sink down into his belly.

 

*

 

Fourth trip downstairs. He isn’t sure what to expect, but waking up is almost peaceful.

There’s a dim light coming from somewhere above him, murky and far away. He reaches out one hand towards it, surprised when his hand bursts through the surface of the water just above him.

Getting his hand out wakes him up instantly in a way that the freezing cold water somehow hadn’t, suddenly he’s surging up out of the water, hands braced below him, sinking down in the soft mud and gasping in air in huge gulps. He levers himself up, yanking his hands out of the muck that tries to suck him back down.

Standing up, the water only comes up around mid-thigh. He’s surrounded by low marshland, stretching out as far as he can see. In the distance, he thinks he can see the enormous waterfall marking the edge of the last circle of hell, where he and Sam must have jumped.

He hears a splash of water behind him and whirls around to find Sam about 20 yards away, coughing and sputtering. Dean sloshes through the water over to Sam, giving him a hand up out of the muck.

Sam looks over at the same high cliff of water where Dean assumes they must’ve come down.

“Holy shit.  We survived that?” Sam says.

“Yeah, sometimes I wonder if we’re the luckiest bastards alive or the stupidest.”

“You should ask Bobby sometime.”

“He’d say both,” Dean snorts. “But serious question - I gotta be honest, I expected a lot more literal hellfire and pitchforks, you know?”

Sam shrugs. “It’s not a one-size-fits all kind of deal, I guess. We spent a year buried in the Dante and Milton, it’s not a huge surprise we’re seeing everything in terms of actual, literal circles of hell." 

“Yeah, except minus the guy in the toga giving us the fifty-cent tour.”

“Makes you think though, what is it he’s seeing?” Sam swallows, eyes scanning the horizon.

Dean doesn’t answer that. He can’t. What sins would hell dredge up from John’s own mind to torture him with? Loosing Mary has gotta be up there. Sam too. Dean hadn’t seen John in the hours before he’d made the deal to bring Sam back to life, but he’d seen him after. He’d seen the haunted look in his eyes, seen the way John looked to Sam with an obsession bordering on paranoia. Checking that he was still there, still breathing.

Dean licks his lips and instantly regrets it. _Yeugh_ , swamp water.

Sam’s got one hand cupped over his eyes, blocking out some of the light from the bright white sky above, peering off into the distance. One side of his mouth quirks up in an almost-grin.

“That looks like our destination.” Sam juts his chin out towards something at Dean’s seven o’clock.

Dean turns around and squints into the distance, sees the vague shape of a tower jutting up into the pale sky.

It’s slow going, slogging through the swamp waters towards the tower. The ground is soft, squelching mud underneath the water, nearly sucking their boots off their feet with each step.  The tower ahead is shrouded in thick fog, but as they get closer they can see it in more detail. It’s a mish mosh of materials and structures thrown together, with a spindly scaffold still hanging limply off one side. Whoever built the place must still at it, piling on one brick and plank of wood at a time.

“Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a troubling question. If this is the center of hell, then where’re all the demons?”

They share a look. A year and some change after the Devil’s Gate opened, and they still have no idea how many or what they let loose on the world.

The number of demons topside had skyrocketed, possessions in cities and towns across the map. Even so, hell is a big fucking place, and Dean had figured that not every one of the bastards could have made it out of the gate before they’d managed to slam it shut. But so far all they’ve seen is souls in the pit - souls on their way to being twisted, tortured, turned into demons - but not actually demonic. Yet.

Maybe the demons were all topside already, thanks to them. They’d opened the Devil’s Gate and unleashed hell on earth.

Or worse, Dean shudders at the thought - all the demons are still ahead.

 

*

 

They make a slow circuit around the tower, crouched down low in the brush for cover and just far enough away to hope they won’t be seen by anyone waiting inside. There’s no actual door, just a cavernous hole in one side of the structure, sunk down in the water about half a foot and stretching upwards nearly a story and a half.

Sam and Dean creep up to one side of it, moving as quietly as they can ankle deep in the water. They pause just outside, breathing silently, heads cocked to listen for any sound from inside.

There is something - not footsteps - more like wind blowing through dead leaves in the fall. If Dean closes his eyes he can almost smell it, crisp air and damp pavement, the car filled with the tang of gunsmoke and blood that would cling to John’s jacket after a hunt.

Sam lays down a marker at the very bottom of the door, Dean doesn’t think it will really be possible for them to get lost enough that they can’t find a giant tower in the middle of a low-lying swamp, but Ruby had warned them against exactly that.

_“It’s real and not real. Down there things don’t work the same way you’re used to, okay? So leave yourselves a trail of breadcrumbs like good little boys, because if I have to go down there and save you two idiots, no one is going to have a good time, I promise. Got it?”_

Dean breathes out, digs his fingers into the palm of one hand to bring him back to the present. Neither of them have the luxury of dwelling in memories, not now. Dean focuses on Sam’s hand, held out at waist level just in front of him, his fingers counting down _three, two_ - 

As one they step inside, pivoting to keep their backs to the wall, squinting into the dark room.

Dean blinks, knife held out in front of him, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark. There’s still that rustling noise, coming from somewhere above them, and now that they’re inside he can hear the faintest murmur of voices.

They’re standing in a hallway, of sorts, just as slapdash as the exterior of the building. Bits and pieces of it are insanely ornate - carved marble accents, glinting gold leaf - and some of it is barely held together with a few nails, rough-hewn timber nailed in place at odd angles, some of it more aptly described as scrap rather than actual lumber. All of it mashed together in a narrow, crooked hallway. They each take a side of the hallway, stopping at each opening as they pass, running a quick check of each room before moving on.  

The rooms are empty; empty tables and shelves, every once in a while there’s a chair tipped over on its side, a thousand year old book floating in the water that covers the floor. The book turns to mush the second Dean prods at it with his knife. It looks like something right out of the oldest and creepiest bits of Bobby’s library. The ones Bobby doesn’t let them open without backup.

At the end of the hall is a stairway that twists drunkenly upwards.  It looks like it used to go down too, even though the floor below is completely flooded now. The water laps gently at the lower stairs going up to the next level, and the wood of the stairs is soft with rot; Dean can feel each board bend under his weight.

They get to the next landing, and there the rustling and the sound of voices is louder, although it’s not clear enough yet to make out words. Dean can tell that whatever is being said, it isn’t a conversation. Instead, it’s an endless monotone punctuated by a clear, steady clicking sound.

The rustling sound turns out to be paper. Books, to be more exact. Rooms and rooms full of them, bound in leather and linen and some of them barely more than folded up newsprint stapled up or tied together with twine. All fluttering just slightly, like there’s a constant breeze running through the pages.

Some are just stacks of something that looks too thick to be paper, Sam runs his finger along the edge of one piece and grimaces. Dean raises an eyebrow but Sam just shakes his head. Now isn’t the time. On the lowest shelves, the bottom of the stacks and tucked into corners there are scrolls. Clay tablets.

Dean waves a hand to get Sam’s attention, then points to his eyes and down at an open page.   _Can you read any of this crap?_

Sam shakes his head again, brows knitted together like it bugs him to be surrounded by something he can’t suss out.

Dean knows the feeling. Some of the stuff is lists, one column after another followed by tally marks, but a lot of the other stuff just looks like regular books - paragraphs of symbols that actually make his eyes hurt if he looks at them to too closely. Dean sets the nearest book back down on the table, careful to leave it just the way it was before.

_Seven...five..two… *clack*_

He taps Sam’s shoulder and Sam reluctantly follows him back out to the hall. Not like they have time for book club right now.  Dean finds himself hoping they don’t ever have time for book club down here, no matter what kind of intel is secreted away in those pages.

They walk past more rooms just like the first one, on either side. In some of them, there are books sitting open on long, low tables, pages flipping past as if moved by an unseen hand.

_Eighty-nine… *clack* three… nineteen..._

The end of the hall opens into a large room. It’s brighter than the others, and noisier. Sam and Dean stand just outside, listening to the rustle of paper inside, the soft footfalls of someone or something walking back and forth. The strange voice is still droning on, pausing only for brief moments between each set of numbers.

_One seventy-four… three-fifteen… twelve…_

He and Sam stand, backs pressed up against opposite sides of the hallway, straining to listen. Dean tries to find a pattern in the numbers, but there is none. Sam looks over at Dean and he shrugs; he doesn’t know what it means either. They listen for a few more moments, until Sam holds up four fingers with a questioning look.

Four sets of footsteps? Dean thinks maybe more like three, but he’d much rather err on the side of caution. Dean nods and taps his forehead with one hand, pointing inside, then he pats the top of his head and points at Sam.

_Two ninety-five..._

Sam looks less than pleased with the plan, but nods understanding. Dean’s signals may not be military-grade standard, but they got the point across nonetheless. _I’ll go in first. You cover me._

Dean takes another minute to gather himself up; he hasn’t trained at this the way Sam has. He lets the power build in his stomach until he can barely see straight anymore, then turns the corner, pushing out power directly into the room.

Turns out Sam was right; there are four of them. Three demons go flying into the walls, crashing into tables and knocking books and scrolls and tablets to the ground. Dean bears down on them, lets Sam worry about the fourth.

“ _Stay where you are,_ ” Sam says and the one in the middle of the room slams back down into his chair.  Dean doesn’t see it, too busy trying to keep the other three held tight.

Sam nudges his shoulder, “Let ‘em go.”

Dean glances over at Sam, hesitating. Sam’s gone all scary motherfucker on him, the way he sometimes does when they’re too goddamn close to a break to risk failure. Dean knows that look, he’s seen it on John more than once.

He eases off, and drops his hold on the three.

_“You three, leave now. Tell no one we were here,”_ Sam commands.

The demons walk out of the room with blank expressions, bodies pliant and obedient. Dean knows Sam’s got some serious juice but it still makes him uneasy, the thought of three demons at his back, unrestrained, heading off somewhere he can’t see.

Now that the others are gone, Dean actually stops to look at the one that’s left - except there isn’t anything to see. The demon, or whatever it is, must still be sitting in the same place, he can feel it. He can still hear it too, but he can’t see it. Not the demon itself at least - only a thin swirling caul draped around the place where its face should be. Dean can see just the barest suggestion of features through the caul, but other than that, he’s staring at empty air.

On either side of the faceless demon, there are two enormous glass counters, both of them filled with what looks like polished river stones. The demon finishes another number sequence, and a tiny stone drops down from somewhere above to land in the container on the left.   _Clack._

It’s still talking, still reading out those random numbers. Dean thinks maybe the sent the wrong demons out of the room - what if all this thing does is spout fucking arithmetic?

“ _Tell me how to find John Winchester_ ,” Sam commands.

“One zero seven… seven two eight…”

“ _Tell me how to find John Winchester!_ ” 

“Five eleven… Two seventy-one...” 

A stone inside the right-hand container lifts up, barely an inch from the pile, and then falls down again. _Clack._

It turns to Dean.

“One zero eight… one six eight… ”

Another tiny stone falls from the ceiling, but it misses the glass containers and hits the floor instead and rolls to a stop barely a foot away from Dean’s boot. He reaches down to pick it up, but his skin sizzles at the contact.

“Sonuvabitch!” He hisses and drops the stone, kicking it away. He sucks his fingertips into his mouth as he watches the stone rattle along the floor.

“Six six four…two zero one...”

Another stone hovers uncertainly above them before falling to the ground at Sam’s feet. Sam ignores it. He’s got one hand outstretched towards the faceless demon. There’s blood leaking from the corners of his eyes.

“Sam - " 

“ _Tell us where he is! NOW!_ ” 

“Sam, I don’t think it knows - ”

“ _IT KNOWS!_ ” 

Sam doesn’t break his hold on the demon, but he tips his chin toward a symbol carved into the wall just behind where the demon’s head should be. It’s the same one the girl on the cliff had scratched into the wall; the same one that had terrified the soul pushing his boulder up the endless hill.

“Seven two eight… five eleven… ”

It’s repeating the same number as before, Dean realizes.

The tiny stone in the right-hand container rolls over and knocks against the glass. Dean walks over to the glass, trailing his fingertips over the surface. There’s something about the containers, about what’s inside.

The glass is thick, but not impenetrable. Dean takes a healthy step back, grabs a chair and swings it hard as he can straight into the side. The glass shatters, sending an avalanche of tiny stones pouring out across the floor.

“Two seven one… ”

One stone lifts up from the pile, hovering in the air. Dean grabs it before it can fall again, not caring if it burns right through his hand. But this stone is ice cold.

It means something. It has to. They didn’t come this far for a shiny rock and some math homework.

Dean raises up his other hand and lets the power build. Up through his toes, crackling across the skin of his legs, underneath the miserable wet slouch of his clothes. It swirls in his stomach, same as always, curling inwards. He pushes it out; but not _just_ out. He pushes outwards and pulls in at the same time, imagines he can almost see the power wrapping around the demon, squeezing tighter and tighter. For the first time since they entered the tower, the monotone narration stops, the stones are silent. The thing in the chair shrieks.

Dean squeezes one fist tight, imagines his thoughts like fingers wrapped around a neck he can’t see. He can feel it though; pressed tight and just one pound of pressure away from snapping.

One side of his mouth curls up into a snarl that might also be just a little bit of a grin. He loosens his hold just enough to let it speak.

“ _Who are you?_ ” Sam asks.

“I will count -”

Dean doesn’t give a shit what it’s counting. He squeezes tight for another long moment and then lets up.

“co- count the names of the living and the dead,” it gasps.  “And the living shall be numbered one hundred forty four thousand and the dead - ”

“ _Where is John Winchester?_ ” Sam commands again.

“- the dead shall be mine.”

Dean snakes a tendril of power downwards, about where he thinks its legs might be. He can feel something there, something attached and possibly even alive. Could be a goddamn mermaid tail for all he cares, he’s gonna make the fucker bleed. He wraps it tight and twists until he can feel something snap.

The wail is so loud it sets his ears ringing.

“As above, so below,” it gasps out.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean yells back.

“ _Oneohseven, seventwoeight, fiveeleven-twosevenone._ ”  

The stone in Dean’s hand rattles.

“ _Follow it,_ ” the demon hisses.

Dean can’t see through the caul, just the vague suggestion of a head with empty eye sockets and a nose, but he could swear the thing is grinning at him. He clenches his fist tight and relishes the feeling of the bones breaking as he crushes the body.

_Crack._

 

*

 

Something has changed while they were in the tower.

The sky is no longer blinding white but dark blood red. The ringing Dean thought was an aftereffect of the screaming won’t go away; it’s getting worse, like he stuck his head up inside one of those big metal church bells while someone hit it with an anvil, bugs bunny-style. He half expects to look down and find his legs shivering with it like some cartoon character, little sizzling lines drawn along the sides of his body to match the vibration running like static over him.

The ground lurches sideways and then Dean knows it isn’t just him. Behind him, Sam goes sprawling too.

“What the hell?” he yells, but Sam doesn’t have an answer.

They’re both on their hands and knees in the swamp, just outside the tower. Sam is scanning the horizon, looking around frantically for an answer when there’s a deafening _crack_ and the ground beneath them goes cockeyed again.

They lay in the shallow water, gasping for air and arms spread out, digging into the mud for purchase, anything to stop the world from shaking. Slowly the ringing in Dean’s ears fades; the color bleeds from the sky.

Dean blinks, looks over at Sam. Slowly they sit up.

The ground around them isn’t a swamp any longer. The low brush and mud are still there, but the water is draining away.  Dean climbs to his feet and looks around. Sam does the same and swears under his breath.

A deep crack has formed in the mud, in the ground itself, nearly twenty yards long and shaped like a lightning bolt shooting away from the tower. The edge of it stops barely ten feet away from where they’re standing.

They skirt the edge of the newly formed crevasse, testing each step carefully in case hell decides to throw them to their knees again, and peer down into the abyss.

Dean’s hand is clenched so tight he doesn’t notice at first, but the tiny stone from the tower is growing just slightly warmer. He opens his fist and holds the stone up to the light. His heart is pounding in time with a faint pulse of warmth from the stone.

 

*

 

Dean opens his eyes to see the back of Bobby’s ratty old sofa. He rolls over and groans.

Ruby is there, grinning.  “You numbskulls actually got somewhere this trip, didn’t you?”

Dean opens his right hand, half expecting the stone to be there. It isn’t. He stares down at his empty palm, feels for a brief moment like he might be going insane.

“Think so, yeah,” Sam says from the floor.

“Good.”

Bobby sits them both down in the kitchen with beers that are suspiciously light on flavor.

“Holy water in the beer, really Bobby?” Dean says.

“Standard precaution.”

Dean takes a large gulp and swallows slowly, just to prove a point. Bobby watches unapologetically as he and Sam drink.

“You boys gonna tell me what the hell happened down there?”

“What’d you mean?” Sam asks.

“I mean you both went rigid, stopped breathing. Then your little demon girlfriend got real excited about something.”

Dean clenches and stretches his fist, the one that still feels like it’s holding the river stone.

“We might actually have a way to find him, Bobby,” says Sam.

Dean looks up sharply at that, because that’s not exactly the first thing that came to mind when Dean thinks about things that might make demons feel all warm and squishy inside. He may not know what the hell was going on downstairs, but whatever had happened on their last trip had to be bad news if Ruby was excited about it. He can’t even begin to guess what it meant that whatever it was, it was strong enough Ruby could sense it, even topside.

Sam just gives him the smallest shake of his head. Bobby’s too busy watching watching Dean knead out the tingling in his fingers.

“Well that’s some good news for once, I guess.” Bobby’s eyes narrow. “How’re you both feelin’?" 

“Like I could use a real beer, actually.” Dean sets his empty bottle down on the table and levers himself up to get another from the fridge.  “Am I allowed the undoctored ones this time, or you have some salt you want me to swallow first?”

“Second shelf down, not the stuff on the door.”

“Thanks. Sam?”

“I’m good.”

“So what’ve you got?”

“I’ve gotta be honest with you, I swear it all made sense downstairs but now I don’t know what the hell to think,” Dean says.  “We have a stone.”

“A stone.”

“Yep.” Dean holds up one hand, fingers about a quarter inch apart. “Like a pebble ‘bout this big. We think it’s connected to him, somehow. I think it gets warmer the closer we get.”

“You _think_?”

Bobby looks at Dean for a long moment and then finishes the rest of his beer in silence.

“One hundred forty four thousand,” Sam mutters.

“Huh?”

“What it kept saying, something about one hundred forty four thousand - ”

Sam grabs a scrap of paper off the far end of the table and a broken pencil nub. He scrawls out the words.

_I will count the names of the living and the dead.  The living shall be numbered one hundred forty four thousand. The dead shall be mine._

_As above, so below._

_Follow it._

 

*

 

Bobby is pacing in the den, picking up books at random and then shaking his head, setting them down somewhere else. Dean ignores it, rubbing his thumb over the palm of the opposite hand.

“The floor was flooded,” Sam is saying. “I mean, it makes sense, it’s built in the middle of a swamp. And the door didn’t look like it was meant to be a door.”

“Dude, none of that place looked like it was supposed to look,” Dean adds.

“No, I mean - it looks like it was just another floor. There’s no entryway or anything, we just walked into a hall, right? The building is sinking, for who knows how long. It sinks low enough, they just bust a hole in the next floor up.”

“And then keep building,” Dean says, thinking of the scaffolding still clinging to one side of the tower. “Okay, how exactly does that help us?”

Sam just shrugs.

“One hundred forty-four thousand - that’s a thing isn’t it? I mean, like a biblical thing?”

“Hell yeah it is,” Bobby says. “It’s the number of the saved that go to heaven when the lights go out for good.”

“It was counting souls,” Sam says.

Sam is tapping his fingers against the scrap of paper, Dean counts the beats, watching the paper flutter with the motion. All those books, scrolls, clay tablets, stones. Keeping track of the souls of the damned. Number after number, in sets of twelve. _One hundred billion souls_ , he thinks.

Dean looks down at his hand, at the palm where he can still feel the phantom weight of the river stone.

“One hundred and seven billion,” he says, meeting Sam’s eyes. “The number of people that have died since the beginning of time?”

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think so, the numbers it was saying, they weren’t in order, right?”

Dean clutches the phantom stone in his right hand.

“It’s his number, isn’t it? The other one, the one that burned - that was mine.” Dean swallows. “His was cold. And it got warmer after - ”

Dean stops, but Sam must know what he isn’t saying. Dean felt it pulsing warmer only after the ground beneath them had cracked open.

John is somewhere deeper in the pit.

 

*

 

_April 2008_

 

Sam isn’t answering his phone. Hasn’t been for days. The most Dean’s got is a short text - ‘ _working on it’_ \- from yesterday afternoon, and it does nothing to stop the bile rising in his throat.

And John - John is playing it like nothing is wrong.

Three days ago they’d hit the road, the ashes still smoking from the conclusion of their current hunt and started driving west. John hadn’t told him of any particular destination, but that didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t one. All that was par for the course as far as Dean was concerned.

What didn’t make sense was that after three days of driving, Dean was beginning to suspect there wasn’t a destination at all. They were meandering along back roads, stopping at diners for lunch and crashing wherever each night.

Dean is slouched in the passenger’s seat, thumbing through some research on his phone when John comes back from the gas station convenience store with coffee and a bag full of road snacks.

“Got a case?”

“No.”

Dean sneaks a look in the bag. “You grab a local paper?”

“Don’t need one.”

“Okay, what, are we retired now? Time to take up macrame and yelling at kids to get off the damn lawn?”

John isn’t looking at him, he’s futzing with the lid on his coffee, but Dean can see the way his jaw clenches.

“It’s a couple of days, Dean. You’ve been bitching at me for months to take it easy, now what? You changed your mind?”

“No - I just. I don’t know. It seems weird.”

They’re both silent for a minute, carefully sipping at the still-scalding hot coffee as an excuse not to talk. Finally John passes his cup over to Dean to hold and puts the car in gear.

“You want to crash here for tonight? I saw a place about a mile back,” John says.

Dean shifts in his seat. He thinks maybe being on the road is just a much a welcome distraction for him as it is for John. It’s barely late afternoon, hours before they would stop driving on a normal day if they had somewhere to be. But John’s only got five days left on his deal and as much as Dean hates the thought of stopping right now - like if they keep on driving maybe they can stay just ahead of whatever is coming after them - it sounds like John wants to stop here.

Dean shrugs. “I’m good either way.”

John takes that as a yes, turns the car around and pulls back onto the road.

The motel has seen better days, but is kept surprisingly clean. They dump their bags just inside the door and Dean picks up the remote to idly flip through the channels. He stops when he feels John’s hand on his back. 

It isn’t usually - it’s not that they don’t touch, but Dean freezes because it’s not usually John who starts. Dean closes his eyes and shuts out the thought that he can count on one hand the days he’s got left. 

He pulls Dean back a step, until their bodies are flush, back to front. Dean swallows.

“This why you wanted to stop?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

There’s a huff of air against the back of Dean’s neck, that he thinks may have been a laugh. John’s hands trail over his chest and stomach, then lower down to his belt.

“You have no idea,” John says.

And he’s right. Dean has no idea that stopping for the night in this town isn’t a coincidence at all. That even as Dean is hanging onto these last few days with both hands, John is planning his escape route.

That tomorrow Dean is going to get picked up by the local cops on a bogus tip, on a string of B & E’s in the area and somehow he matches the description of the perp. That it’ll take a couple phone calls to verify his alibi - _Hey, buddy, I was three states over with witnesses and unless you think I can fucking teleport….?_

That when he finally gets released, John will be long gone.

 

*

 

_Early June 2008  
_ _Somewhere in Montana_

Dean doesn’t remember finding John. Or burying him.

He remembers digging, sweat running down face and shoulders aching. No telling how many graves he’d dug up by now; too many to count, not that he’d ever want to. But this one he’d dug with Sam, knowing there’d be no salting and burning this body. 

He remembers sitting in the car after, John’s keys in his hand. Reaching down to grab the flask out from under the seat only to find it gone. He’d found the keys at a storage locker, days ago when he was tracing down John’s last steps. (Too late.)

He remembers going back to Wyoming, to the Devil’s Gate with Sam. Opening the tomb only to find it dead and cold inside. There would be no storming into the pit, Colt in hand.

Dean hunts, because it’s what John would do if he was still - if he still could.

And when the hunt is over he drives until the road starts to blur, pulling over to sleep only when he has to. It’s where he is now, laid out across the front seat, jacket shoved between his head and the door, one arm hanging down into the footwell, fingers clasped around the neck of a bottle of something cheap that burns as it goes down.

His phone rings. It’s Sam.

“Dean, where are you? I found something.”

 

*

 

_Early June 2008  
_ _Pueblo, Colorado_

 

The peeling wallpaper is covered in photocopies and notes, tacked up in a sprawling mass.

Dean looks it over, trying to make sense of it. Something about parsley, an old wives’ tale. Bits and pieces of what Dean recognizes as his own photocopied handwriting - the notebook filled with the terms of the contract, with a translation in Sam’s compact handwriting just underneath. He turns away, not wanting those memories just now.

“You said you had something?”

Sam doesn’t answer right away. He’s got that damn spiral notebook open on one end of the table, cross-referencing it with something on his laptop. Sam licks his lips, closes the laptop and looks at Dean.

“Ruby said she told you what happens to souls in hell, right?”

“She mentioned it, yeah.”

Dean would’ve liked to call her a liar, unfortunately he’d met enough demons recently that all told the same story. Souls could climb out of the pit, sure. In fact, they did it all the time.

And when they did, they weren’t human anymore.

But Sam is grinning at him.  

“So they aren’t condemned to the pit forever, once they break they’re free to climb out if they can. Dean - ” Sam stops, takes a breath, “there’s no length of time specified in the contract. It makes sense, it probably takes a different amount of time to break each soul anyway.”

“How the hell does this help us, Sam?”

“But listen - ”

“No, _you_ listen. I’ve heard the same damn thing from every demon I’ve asked. Sooner or later, John’s gonna crawl his way out. Great. But he’s not gonna be John anymore, he’s going to be one of them. What the hell have you even been doing here, with the contract? Don’t you get it? It’s over. We lost. The only thing left for us to do is be there with the Colt and one last bullet ready for the day he does crawl out.”

Sam is shaking his head. “Not if we break him out first.”

“We already tried that. It didn’t work.”

“We tried breaking in physically. There’s tons of lore about people going downstairs who weren’t dead. There are other ways to do it.”

The floorboards creak and Dean whips around to see Ruby standing in the doorway.

“Catch,” she says, and tosses him something.

Dean catches it instinctively, but then immediately lets go, dropping it on the floor. “A freaking hex bag?”

“I’m sorry, did you think I could send you two numbskulls to Hell with a charm bracelet?”

Dean is about to fire back but Sam interrupts.  “Our bodies stay topside, our souls go downstairs. We go down, yank him out, and his contract is fulfilled.”

Ruby cuts her eyes over to Sam. “You’re forgetting something.”

“If he dies again, he still goes back to the pit,” Sam says. “But we can worry about that after - ”

“What do you mean, if he dies again? You got some hoodoo to make him immortal?”

“It buys us more time, Dean. If we get him out of the pit before he turns demon, then you don’t have to be there waiting in the tall grass with the Colt. Let’s get him out first, worry about the rest later. 

Sam takes a deep breath. “Dean, this is a start. It’s more than we’ve had in months.”

Dean nudges the hex bag with the toe of his boot. He can almost hear John in his ear, telling him it was dangerous stuff, messing with witchcraft.

But John wasn’t here anymore, and Dean has never really been all that great at steering clear of danger.

 

*

 

_Present_

They walk back to the tower. This time when they reach the stairs, they head down.

The stairs are waterlogged, soft with rot, but drained of water just like the swamp outside. Dean goes first, trying to step as close to the supports on the sides as he can, testing each foothold before putting his full weight on it. They don’t know how long the tower has been sinking, no way to tell how far down it goes if they fall.

Floor after floor, they climb downwards. The walls and stairs are slick with mud and pale green moss. Dean wonders that anything could possibly grow down here in the near-dark.

Eventually the wooden stairs give way to crumbling brick, then rough hewn stone, then bare solid rock. The path is little more than a tunnel, tight enough that Dean walks angled - one shoulder leading the way, a hand stretched out in front of him. There’s the smallest hint of light coming from below, the only light he has to see by.

The light is an opening, when they finally reach it, nearly wide enough for he and Sam to stand side by side. They peer out into the lowest circles of hell.

Circles turns out to be an accurate description. The cavern is enormous and round, with rings of pathways cut into the sides, spiraling downward. At the very bottom is the source of the light - bright but distant, blue-white flickering light that fills the cavern. 

Blocking it is a writhing twist of light and shadow that looks miles wide from up above. Turns out hell isn’t empty of demons after all. What looks like a massive battle rages below, dark clouds of demons clashing again each other, brilliant bursts of light flashing with each impact. The cavern shudders as offshoots of the mass of demons crash into the walls, sending stone and souls alike tumbling down below.

The light is bright enough that Sam and Dean both have to peer through squinted eyes, with their hands held up to block the worst of it.

Farther up above, creatures like bats circle around one side of the cavern - like bats but three times the size, with long curling tails that ravel and unravel in the air behind them. They screech as they fly, diving and climbing, darting down to snap their jaws at any soul that strays too close to the edge, or has the misfortune to fall.

Dean cups the river stone in his palm, feels it grow warmer. He holds it out and Sam plucks it out of his hand, sucking in a sharp breath when he feels the warmth too. Sam leans in, yells into Dean’s ear, “He’s here.”

“Yeah, but where?” Dean yells back.

Sam curls his fingers around the stone and one corner of his mouth tugs to the side. He says something but Dean doesn’t catch the words.

Sam takes the lead and they continue on the winding path downward. It opens up on the right side, smaller caves stretching out far enough that the back isn’t visible. There are souls shut up in coffins filled with fire, screeching and clawing at the lids, souls in shreds, torn by the mouths of slathering, matted hounds. Souls scrabbling at each other blindly, tearing at each other with fingernails and teeth.

Sam and Dean skirt around the perimeter of the caverns. Dean holds up one shaking hand, palm out ahead of him, sending a steady trickle of power through it, just enough to keep their way clear. Hopefully not enough to draw attention.

Sam is focused on the stone, rolling it over in his hand as they make their way down. He’s got his other hand in the sleeve of Dean’s shirt, leading him along without looking back.

The path narrows back down to a ledge, just wide enough for them to walk single file, nothing between them and the steep drop on the left.

They reach a small opening in the solid rock on the right and Sam hisses, one hand clutching the wrist of the hand holding the stone. Dean reaches out to grab the stone away from Sam, hand grasping at empty space just as Sam disappears in front of him.

 

*

 

The first thing Dean hears is Sam yelling, his nostrils filled with the smell of burning flesh. Dean bolts upright, looks over to find Bobby hunched over Sam, patting him down for injuries he won’t find.

“It’s his hand,” Dean says, voice rough with disuse. “Burned.”

Bobby’s up and back within seconds, thrusting a bottle of water at Dean and reaching down to pry Sam’s hand open. Sam’s palm is empty and unmarked, but it steams when the water hits it. Sam’s eyes roll back and he slumps down on the couch, out cold.

“What does that mean?”

Bobby shakes his head, mouth open, eyes fixed on Sam’s open palm.

“Will the water even help?  He’s not physically hurt, not up here - ”

“We’re gonna have to wait and see. I don’t know what else we can do, other than wrap the hand and hope to holy hell he’s okay.”

It’s then that Dean looks up and sees Ruby standing silent at the edge of the room.

“Well? Come on, you say you want to help us, now’s your chance. Do something.”

“Do what, exactly?” She stops to look over at Sam, then back at Dean and Bobby. “It’s not his body taking the damage, it’s his soul. A little water and and a bandaid isn’t going to fix that.”

“So find something else that will!”

Ruby starts to reply but she’s cut sort by Sam waking up. His eyes flutter briefly, and he mumbles under his breath, turning his head to the side and his face pinching up like he’s still in pain. Finally he opens his eyes and squints up at them.

“Bobby?”

“Welcome back, kid,” Bobby replies.

“What happened?“

“Your hand was getting fried extra-crispy style,” Dean says.

Sam sits up a bit and Bobby backs off to give him space. Sam looks down at his hand, flexing the fingers gingerly.

“It still hurt?” Bobby asks.

Sam nods.

Bobby shoves a towel under Sam’s hand and passes over the bottle of water.  “See if that helps.”

The water still hisses and steams when it hits his skin, but eventually tapers off. The skin still looks the same, good as new, or as close to it as a hunter’s palm can be. But Sam’s jaw isn’t clenched and the furrow of tension is gone from his brow, so the water must’ve done something to help.

Something niggles in Dean’s mind. “Bobby, is that - ?”

“Yeah, it’s holy water alright.”

There’s a long moment of silence that follows. Sam carefully passes the water bottle to his injured hand and tips it over his good one. The water pours off like normal. Dean hesitates for the barest second, but reaches out his hand to hold it under the stream of water as well. The water is cold, running over his hand just like it should.

“You’re both fine. For now,” Ruby says.

Dean turns around.  “What the hell does that mean?”

“It’s not that complicated, genius. You still have time, but you’re gonna have to move quickly if you want to get John out. That’s five trips done, and two left to go. Are you close?”

Sam looks at Dean, then down at his hand.

“Yeah, we’re close.”

 

*

 

The opening in the cave wall leads into a maze of tunnels, cells blocked up with thick metal-reinforced doors. Sam has managed to to wrap the stone up in the sleeve of his shirt, but it doesn’t seem to be helping much.

They pause at each branch of the tunnel so that Sam - sweating and pale, can feel the spike of pain that will lead them onwards.

They reach a narrow corridor with tunnels on either side and Sam collapses to his knees. His head lolls against the stone wall, he clenches the stone tight for another endless second before dropping it to the floor and then curling his body around the burnt hand.

“Dean - ” he says, but can’t get anything else out.

Dean starts banging on the cell doors. They’re close, he can feel it.

“John?!  John!”

Behind him Sam climbs to his feet, swaying, his burnt hand tucked in close against his chest. He starts pounding on the cell doors on the other side of the hall with his good hand, yelling for John.

In the next moment they’re both thrown off their feet by a blast that shakes the entire tunnel, sending split pieces of rock and dust crashing down from above.

 

*

 

_Early June 2008  
_ _Pueblo, Colorado_

“Not a chance in hell, and I mean that literally,” Dean says.

“We’re gonna need them, Dean. Both of us. If we get separated - ”

“If we get separated, we’ll figure it out. I’m not letting a demon carve into me for some metaphysical bullshit knife!”

 Sam’s lips pinch together as he leans back in his chair. Ruby is perched on a corner of the desk, arms crossed.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Dean says. “But this is one step too far.”

“Okay,” Sam is nodding slowly. “Okay. I’ll go in alone.”

“That’s not what I - ”

“No, it is. You want to go in with me, then this is what we have to do to make sure we can get him out. Otherwise there’s no point. We have to leave the markers for ourselves to find our way back, and if we want to leave the markers, then we need the knives.”

Dean pulls his Ka-Bar out of the sheath. “I’ve got plenty of knives already, thanks.”

“One that will work in hell, genius,” Ruby says. “Without a physical body.”

Dean pauses. It’s not that he’s super excited about the prospect of slipping in the back door of hell completely unarmed, but the knives aren’t going to be worth shit in a fight anyway. The only weapons you could sneak into hell were ones that worked against yourself.

“Fine. Whatever, let’s do it.”

Sam clears off one side of the desk while Ruby starts setting up her stuff. Dean pulls over a chair and sits down backwards, legs straddled on either side of the backrest.

Ruby tips a flask Dean’s way - a familiar flask.

He grabs it out of her hands. “Where’d you get this?”

“It was in the field,” Sam answers. “With him.”

Dean doesn’t need to ask who, or which field. The one where they’d buried him. He traces his fingers over the initials etched on the cap and takes a healthy swig. Then another. He doesn’t give it back when he’s done.

He rolls up his left sleeve and lays his hand, palm up, on the desk. Sam wraps a hand around Dean’s wrist, anchoring it to the table. Now that he’s closer, he can see the edge of the bandage on Sam’s arm, partially covered by his sleeve.

Ruby is quick with the scalpel - skill born from plenty of practice, Dean is sure.  He grinds his teeth together but refuses to look away as she works.

When she’s done, he’s got a patch of skin missing about half the length of his forearm in the rough shape of a knife, and a shiny new bandage of his own. Sam releases his arm and cracks open a window, letting in fresh air to drive away the stench of burning flesh from the ritual.

“So how do we know if it worked?” Dean asks.

“It worked,” Ruby says, wiping down the scalpel.

“Yeah, like I’m gonna take your word for it.”

“It worked,” Sam repeats.

“I guess we’ll find out pretty soon, anyway.”

“Yeah, we will.”

 

*

 

_Present_

Dean can’t see; the cloud of demon-smoke and dust in the air is too thick. He scrambles along the wall, backing away from the falling debris.

It takes a second for Dean to understand. They’d been so focused on following the stone, he and Sam hadn’t noticed how close they’d gotten to the violent struggle of demon-smoke near the bottom of the cavern. Dean squints his eyes, watching now as smoke and blinding light thrash together, filling the space.

Something oily-black snakes up his leg, twisting around his body like a vice. “Sam!”

“ _Let him go._ ”

The voice slams into him like a physical blow. It’s a command laced with power, but it’s not Sam talking - not this time. Dean tries to yell again, but he can’t get enough air. The thing holding him shudders and tightens even more.

“ _I said, let him go._ ”

Dean’s eyes are clenched shut against all the crap still floating in the air, but even through his eyelids he can see a brilliant light flickering through the cloud. It grows brighter and stronger, until all he can do is press his face into the crook of his elbow to block it out. The pressure around him trembles and then slackens, and then is ripped away completely.

A hand grabs his shoulder.

“Sam?” He croaks.

“ _We’re too late_.”

It doesn’t sound like Sam. Dean can feel blood trickling down his neck. There’s a tang of metal on his tongue.

“Too late for - huh?”

Dean cracks open one eye. It isn’t Sam in front of him. He rears back, but the hands holding him are too strong.  

“ _There’s no time. We have to go, now_.”

“Get off me!” Dean spreads his fingers and lets loose a pulse of power, directed right at the thing in front of him, but it doesn’t even flinch.  “ _Sam! John?!_ ”

“ _There’s no time, we have to leave._ ” It starts moving backwards towards the opening of the tunnel, dragging Dean along with it.

Dean twists around to look behind him. Sam is there, standing hunched over next to a smoking crater in the cavern wall, pulling something up.  Someone.

_John_. It’s John, head bowed and body ragged, twisting away from Sam’s hold.

Dean fights the thing holding him with everything he’s got - John is there, John is _right there_ \- and Dean needs to get him out of here. The thing holding him doesn’t even flinch.

He’s dragged away. Back down the winding path of tunnels and out into the main cavern.  The battle outside is still raging on. In the next second he is heaved upwards so fast his stomach drops and the air is forced out of his lungs, shooting up through the very roof of the cavern like it’s nothing at all.

He tries to breathe, tries to stay awake, but he loses consciousness at the first glimpse of starlight in the sky above.

 

*

 

The room is blinding white after so long spent in the darkness of the pit, when Dean comes to on the cold tile floor.

There’s a man standing near the door - trenchcoat open and tie loosened like he’s some tax accountant running late for a lunch meeting. Dean’s head is killing him, and his chest still feels like it’s been trapped in a vice. He presses his hand flat against the floor to try to get his bearings, then rolls to his feet slowly.

The guy is just standing there, watching Dean like he’s some mildly interesting exhibit at the zoo.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“It’s good to see you again, Dean. We have work to do.”

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's an old wives' tale about parsley seeds, because (I guess) they take a really long time to germinate. The story goes that the seeds travel to hell and back seven times before they germinate. The seeds are one of the ingredients of the boys' hex bags, and the source of the seven trip limit.
> 
> The demon who's counting souls is based on the art of Christopher Ryan McKenney - specifically this image: <https://www.flickr.com/photos/mcalister570/8075033222/>
> 
> The character is unnamed in the fic but in my notes he was 'the curator' ... unfortunately this warped into calling him 'el contador' thanks to Archer, which really dimmed the creepy factor. Hence, no name in the fic...

**Author's Note:**

> This one is a bit of a beast, so it's going to be split up into three parts.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! Comments and concrit are welcome!


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